Job — Chapter 24

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: The third and last round of speeches has begun, and it is the harshest. Eliphaz has stopped hinting and accused Job outright of specific crimes against the poor: "you have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing and stripped the naked of their clothing," he has sent "widows away empty" and crushed "the arms of the fatherless" (22:6–9). Job's answer runs through chapters 23 and 24, and the ESV keeps one heading over both. In chapter 23 Job longed to find God and lay his case before him: "Oh, that I knew where I might find him" (23:3). In chapter 24 he widens the lens from his own case to the whole world. The very crimes Eliphaz pinned on him really do happen, but those who commit them are not struck down, and their victims cry out to a God who seems not to answer. Job is no longer asking only "Why me?" but why God does not set a day to put the world right. The chapter ends with a passage (vv18–25) that is among the most debated in the book, because parts of it sound more like the friends than like Job.

Job Replies: Where Is God? (vv1–12)

• "Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty?" (v1). The words "of judgment" are supplied by the ESV to make the sense clear. The verb rendered "kept" is tsaphan, which the lexicon gives as "hide, treasure up," and in this verse "stored up on the part of Shaddai." God has times of reckoning stored up but hidden. JFB: "Job does not doubt that they are appointed: nay, he asserts it (Job 21:30)." The Tyndale notes point out that Scripture elsewhere agrees God has fixed such times (Eccl 3:17) but keeps their timing to himself (Acts 1:7).
• "Why do those who know him never see his days?" (v1). "His days" are God's days of reckoning, the kind of day the prophets would later call "the day of the LORD." Those who know God long for it most, and they are the ones left waiting.
• "Some move landmarks; they seize flocks and pasture them" (v2). A landmark was a boundary stone marking the edge of a family's field or pasture. The word is gevul, "border, boundary," used in the laws and proverbs that forbid moving one (Deut 19:14; 27:17; Prov 22:28). In Israel's thinking land was God's grant to a family, not a commodity for the powerful to swallow up (1 Kgs 21; Mic 2:2). Shifting a stone a few feet was a quiet way to steal a poor neighbour's livelihood, and grazing stolen flocks openly shows a thief with no fear of being caught.
• "They drive away the donkey of the fatherless; they take the widow's ox for a pledge" (v3). A pledge was security for a loan. The verb is chabal, "take or hold in pledge," the same word Eliphaz used when he accused Job of taking pledges "for nothing" (22:6). The Tyndale notes point out that the law forbade taking a person's means of living as security (Deut 24:6, 17). An orphan's only donkey or a widow's only ox was exactly that. JFB catches the edge in Job's words: "Others really do, and with impunity, that which Eliphaz falsely charges the afflicted Job with."
• "They thrust the poor off the road; the poor of the earth all hide themselves" (v4). JFB: "Literally, they push the poor out of their road in meeting them."
• "Like wild donkeys in the desert the poor go out to their toil" (v5). The wild donkey roamed the wasteland foraging for whatever it could find (39:5–8). Driven off their land, the poor now scavenge the same way for food for their children. The ESV, like the Tyndale notes, takes vv5–8 as describing the dispossessed poor. Matthew Henry and JFB read vv5–6 instead as desert robbers living by plunder.
• "They glean the vineyard of the wicked man" (v6). Gleaning was the right of the poor to gather what the harvesters left behind (Lev 19:9–10; Ruth 2). The Tyndale notes observe the bitter twist here. A just landowner leaves something behind; a wicked one leaves nothing, and he may well have stolen the land from them in the first place, as Ahab took Naboth's vineyard. The Hebrew verb, laqash, appears only here, and the lexicon gives a rougher sense than "glean": "despoil" or "take the aftermath." It also notes that some scholars read "the rich" for "the wicked." Either way the hungry are scraping a living from someone else's leftovers.
• "They lie all night naked, without clothing, and have no covering in the cold" (vv7–8). JFB notes that "Frost is not uncommon at night in those regions (Ge 31:40)." The law required a lender to return a poor man's cloak taken in pledge before sunset, because it was his only blanket: "in what else shall he sleep?" (Exod 22:26–27). Soaked by mountain rain, the poor "cling to the rock for lack of shelter."
• "There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast" (v9). The ESV puts this verse in parentheses because it breaks in to name the oppressors again. A creditor seizes an infant as payment for a debt, to be raised as a slave. The Bible records the threat in the time of Elisha (2 Kgs 4:1) and the reality in Nehemiah's day (Neh 5:5), and Jesus' parable assumes it (Matt 18:25). JFB takes the second line's "pledge" as the poor debtor's very garment.
• "Hungry, they carry the sheaves... they tread the winepresses, but suffer thirst" (vv10–11). The poor harvest grain while starving and tread grapes while parched. The law said not even an ox was to be muzzled while it threshed (Deut 25:4). JFB: "Worse treatment than that of the ox." The Tyndale notes add Paul's principle that the worker should share in the crop he works (2 Tim 2:6).
• "From out of the city the dying groan... yet God charges no one with wrong" (v12). The scene moves to the town, and the suffering is no better there. The Hebrew consonants can be read "men" or "the dying." The ESV takes "the dying," which matches "the wounded" in the next line, a reading JFB also favoured. Then comes the line that carries the whole chapter. "Wrong" is tiphlah, a rare word meaning moral unseemliness. The lexicon lists only three uses, and one of them is 1:22: "In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong." At the start of the book Job refused to charge God with tiphlah. Now he complains that God charges no one with it. The cross-references link the verse to Abel's blood crying from the ground (Gen 4:10) and to the Preacher who saw "the tears of the oppressed" with no one to comfort them (Eccl 4:1). The Tyndale notes observe why this troubles Job so deeply: it seems so unlike the God who heard Israel's groaning in Egypt (Exod 2:23–24).
• Commentators: Matthew Henry reads vv1–12 as two kinds of oppressors, those who abuse the law to rob the weak (vv2–4, 9–12) and open robbers like wild donkeys (vv5–8). His lesson on v1 is worth keeping: "General truths must be held fast, though we may find it difficult to reconcile them to particular events." He also notes that God's patience lets the oppressor look clever for a time: "while he prospers he passes for a wise man." Guzik points out that Job agrees with Eliphaz about how the wicked behave. What Job denies is that he is one of them, and that such men are always punished in this life. He also passes on Francis Andersen's warning that this chapter is full of textual and structural problems.

Job Replies: Where Is God? (vv13–17)

• "There are those who rebel against the light" (v13). Job turns from crimes done openly to crimes done in the dark. JFB: "So far as to openly committed sins; now, those done in the dark." The verb is marad, "rebel," normally used of revolt against a king or against God (Num 14:9). The lexicon notes that this is the only place it is used of rebelling against light. Henry takes the light as conscience and God's law as well as the sun.
• "The murderer rises before it is light... and in the night he is like a thief" (v14). Three figures follow: murderer, adulterer and burglar. JFB: "Thieves in the East steal while men sleep at night; robbers murder at early dawn."
• "The eye of the adulterer also waits for the twilight, saying, 'No eye will see me'" (v15). Proverbs paints the same scene: the young man goes to the forbidden woman's house "in the twilight, in the evening" (Prov 7:9). "No eye will see me" is the false confidence of all secret sin, like the wicked in the Psalms who say "God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it" (Ps 10:11). JFB gives only cross-references on this verse.
• "In the dark they dig through houses" (v16). With mud-brick walls, a burglar could literally tunnel in. The verb is chathar, "dig," used of house-breaking here and of Ezekiel digging through the wall (Ezek 12:5, 7). The Greek Old Testament translated it with diorussō, "dig through," and that is the very word Jesus used: "where thieves break in and steal" (Matt 6:19). "By day they shut themselves up." JFB notes that the Hebrew is literally "they seal up," and that "they do not know the light" means they shun it.
• "For deep darkness is morning to all of them" (v17). "Deep darkness" is tsalmaveth, the word behind the King James Version's "shadow of death" in Psalm 23:4. For these people morning, which exposes them, is as dreaded as death. JFB: "They shrink from the 'morning' light, as much as other men do from the blackest darkness." Jesus put the same truth simply: "people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil" (John 3:19). The cross-references also link the passage to God's own speech, where the morning takes hold of the earth so that "the wicked be shaken out of it" (38:13, 15). Job complains that dawn does nothing to stop them. God will reply that every sunrise is his work against them.
• Commentators: Henry takes the three night-workers as men who fear human eyes while forgetting the eye of God, which never closes. Guzik links the passage to Paul's call to "cast off the works of darkness" (Rom 13:12) and passes on Adam Clarke's point that the adulterer's disguise shows he knows what he is doing is shameful. JFB adds little beyond word notes on vv13, 16 and 17.

Job Replies: Where Is God? (vv18–25)

• The puzzle of vv18–25. Up to v17 Job has said that the wicked get away with it. Suddenly, in vv18–20 and again in v24, the text says they are swept away, cursed, forgotten and cut down. That sounds like Bildad and Zophar, not Job. The shape of the third round sharpens the puzzle: Bildad's speech is only six verses (ch 25) and Zophar does not speak at all. So many modern scholars think lines have been displaced and assign vv18–24, or parts of them, to Zophar's missing speech or to Bildad. Others keep the passage with Job and read it in one of three ways. First, Job is quoting the friends' view in order to answer it, as he did in 21:17–19. The ESV takes this line, adding "You say" at v18 and closing the quotation after v20. Second, some translators read the verbs in vv18–20 as wishes or curses: may their portion be cursed, may the grave take them. Job would be calling down the judgment God is slow to send. Third, Job himself believes the wicked will finally fall, and objects only that their end is no different from anyone else's and comes too late to be seen as justice. The Tyndale notes set out these options without settling them. On any reading, Job ends still insisting that the friends' tidy scheme does not match the world.
• "You say, 'Swift are they on the face of the waters'" (v18). In the friends' picture the wicked man is like a twig or a bit of foam carried quickly downstream and gone. "Their portion is cursed in the land; no treader turns toward their vineyards." The irony is pointed, since Job has just described the poor treading the wicked man's winepresses (v11). JFB reads vv18–21 as Job quoting his friends ironically, as in chapter 21, and explains the curse on their portion as spoken "by those who witness their 'swift' destruction."
• "Drought and heat snatch away the snow waters; so does Sheol those who have sinned" (v19). As snowmelt vanishes into sun-baked ground, the friends say, so the sinner vanishes into the grave. JFB calls it an image of water that "quickly dries up in the sunburnt sand, not leaving a trace behind," and notes the abrupt Hebrew, literally "the grave—they have sinned!"
• "The womb forgets them; the worm finds them sweet" (v20). Even his mother forgets him; only the worm enjoys him. Job had already said that worms cover rich and poor alike (21:26). "Wickedness is broken like a tree" recalls Job's own complaint that God had pulled up his hope "like a tree" (19:10). JFB suggests reading "as a staff" and calls a broken staff "the emblem of irreparable ruin."
• "They wrong the barren, childless woman, and do no good to the widow" (v21). The ESV takes this as Job speaking again, returning to the oppressors of vv2–4. A childless woman had no son to defend her in her old age. JFB: "barren—without sons, who might have protected her." Guzik passes on E. W. Bullinger's remark that a barren woman was even more defenceless than a widow.
• "Yet God prolongs the life of the mighty by his power" (v22). The verb is mashak, whose basic sense in the lexicon is "draw, drag." Translations divide on it. The ESV takes it as "draws out," that is, prolongs the life of the powerful, so that men who have given up hope of recovery rise again from their sickbeds. Other versions take it as "drags away," God dragging the mighty off to judgment. JFB favours the ESV's sense and answers the friends' theory in three words: "Experience proves the contrary."
• "He gives them security, and they are supported, and his eyes are upon their ways" (v23). God sees everything they do, and still lets them stand. JFB captures Job's bewilderment: "How strange that God should so favor them, and yet have His eyes all the time open."
• "They are exalted a little while, and then are gone" (v24). The wicked do die, but how? "Brought low and gathered up like all others," cut off "like the heads of grain" at harvest. That is the image Eliphaz used for the righteous man who comes to his grave in ripe old age, "like a sheaf gathered up in its season" (5:26). JFB makes the same link: the wicked are cut down "in a ripe and full age, not prematurely." The cross-references tie the verse to 21:13, where the wicked "in peace go down to Sheol." Job's point is that the death of the wicked looks exactly like everyone else's. It does not look like judgment.
• "If it is not so, who will prove me a liar?" (v25). Job ends with a challenge. The friends argued from theory, Job from what anyone can see. JFB gives only a cross-reference here, to 9:24, where Job asked of the world's injustice, "If it is not he, who then is it?"
• Commentators: The three take different lines on vv18–25. JFB splits the passage: vv18–21 are the friends' views quoted ironically, and vv22–24 are Job's answer. The ESV ends the quotation one verse earlier. Matthew Henry keeps the whole passage as Job's own and reads it in the third way: the wicked will be miserable after death, but not visibly in this life, which contradicts the friends' view. He even takes "swift on the waters" in v18 as a description of pirates. His comment on v24 is a good summary: "That honour which is got by sin will soon turn into shame." Guzik also treats the whole chapter as Job's. He notes that Job is not denying a future judgment but wants God to act now, and he passes on Andersen's view that Job's position here is more balanced than the friends' but also more baffled. Guzik compares Job to Asaph in Psalm 73.

Pointing to Christ

Job asks why those who know God "never see his days" (v1). Jesus answered a version of that question when he said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day" (John 8:56). The day Job longed for has a face. James takes up Job's complaint about the unpaid harvesters (vv10–11) and answers it: "the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts" (Jas 5:4). God does hear the groans of v12. His patience is not blindness, and the day is set (Acts 1:7). Yet the deepest answer is that the Light who came into the world (John 3:19) did not come only to expose the wicked. He took the place of the poor in this chapter. Jesus was stripped of his clothing, and on the cross he said, "I thirst" (John 19:28), like the workers who tread the winepress and go thirsty. The innocent took the place of the oppressed and bore the judgment the oppressors deserved, so that anyone who comes to him, poor or powerful, may stand in that day not as an enemy of the light but as a child of it.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik observes that Job's description of oppression is remarkably detailed and sympathetic — he has clearly seen and cared about the poor. This is ironic given Eliphaz's accusation in 22:6-9 that Job himself oppressed the needy. Guzik notes that Job's complaint anticipates Habakkuk and many psalms: the problem is not God's existence but God's apparent passivity before evil.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• BibleProject: bibleproject.com On the whole book: the speech from the whirlwind, and why it answers Job the way it does.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Job -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• Honest Questions Aren't a Lack of Faith (v.1) — Job asks why God, who sees everything, doesn't set clear days of judgment for the wicked, refusing to pretend the world's injustice isn't real. Does wrestling honestly with why God allows evil actually reveal your faith rather than undermine it?
• Seeing the Poor as Fully Human (vv.2-8) — Job describes the oppressed in specific, compassionate detail — stripped of clothing, scavenging for food, sleeping exposed to the cold — rather than treating poverty as an abstract category. Do you let yourself see the specific suffering of people around you, or does it stay a vague statistic?
• Delay Is Not the Same as Approval (v.12) — Job observes that the wounded cry out and the dying groan, yet God does not appear to charge anyone with wrongdoing in the moment. Can you trust that God's patience with evil doesn't mean He condones it, even when the waiting is painful?
• Prolonged Ease for Those Who Do Wrong (vv.22-24) — Job notes that God still grants the wicked security and long life in the meantime, even before any final reckoning comes. When wrongdoing seems to go unpunished for a long season, can you keep trusting God's timing instead of demanding it match your own?