Dusk on the desert fringe: a poor family of four small figures in thin worn wool, seen from behind, walk off a road into bare wasteland with one thin donkey, under a calm, empty, cooling sky.

The Book of

Job 24

Job speaks on, round three. He can’t find God, and now he looks up at the poor. If the friends’ rule holds, where are the bad days of the men who crush them?

25 verses≈ 3 min1 personBSB

Images are artistic interpretations.

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In this chapter

Where we are

1–3The testBlameless, stripped of everything, and his cry
4–14Round oneThe friends speak; Job answers
15–21Round twoMy Redeemer lives
22–31Round threeThen wisdom, and Job's last defenseChapter 24
32–37ElihuA younger voice
38–41The LORD speaksOut of the whirlwind
42The endJob prays and is restored

Job: Judgment for the Wicked

Job

Job 24:1

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Job

Job

Men move boundary stones;

they pasture stolen flocks.

They drive away the donkey of the fatherless

and take the widow’s ox in pledge.

They push the needy off the road

and force all the poor of the land into hiding.

Job

The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast;

the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt.

Job

Job

Without clothing, they wander about naked.

They carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.

They crush olives within their walls;

they tread the winepresses, but go thirsty.

Job

From the city, men groan,

and the souls of the wounded cry out,

yet God charges no one with wrongdoing.

Reflect

Off the road

Job’s own pain has opened his eyes to other people’s. Who is being pushed “off the road” where you live? Write one name or group, and one thing you could do.

Job

Then there are those who rebel against the light,

not knowing its ways or staying on its paths.

When daylight is gone, the murderer rises

to kill the poor and needy;

in the night he is like a thief.

Job

The eye of the adulterer watches for twilight.

Thinking, ‘No eye will see me,’ he covers his face.

Job

Night in a narrow lane of rough fieldstone houses: a low hole has been broken through a stone-and-mud wall, loose stones below it, in faint starlight, no one there.

In the dark they dig through houses;

by day they shut themselves in,

never to experience the light.

For to them, deep darkness is their morning;

surely they are friends with the terrors of darkness!

Question

Quick question

What is Job really asking?

What does Job ask in verse 1?

Job

A brown wadi running high after rain, seen from above in gray light, pale foam spinning on the water and carried off, smooth wet rock and pale sky above.

They are but foam on the surface of the water;

their portion of the land is cursed,

so that no one turns toward their vineyards.

As drought and heat consume the melting snow,

so Sheol steals those who have sinned.

The womb forgets them;

the worm feeds on them;

they are remembered no more.

So injustice is broken like a tree.

They prey on the barren and childless,

and show no kindness to the widow.

0:25

Narrated by Bob Souer · BSB audio, public domain

Job

Yet by His power, God drags away the mighty;

though rising up, they have no assurance of life.

He gives them a sense of security,

but His eyes are on their ways.

Job

He gives them a sense of security, but His eyes are on their ways.

Job 24:23

Job

Job

They are exalted for a moment,

then they are gone;

they are brought low and gathered up like all others;

they are cut off like heads of grain.

Job

If this is not so, then who can prove me a liar

and reduce my words to nothing?”

Pray

Pray for the fatherless and the widow. Pray for the hungry who carry other people’s harvests. Ask God to bring His justice, and to make you part of it. Ask Him to show you where your own hands are in this.

You’ve experienced

Job 24

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A verse to carry with you

He gives them a sense of security, but His eyes are on their ways.

Job 24:23

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