Job 24

¹“Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?

Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?

²There are those who move boundary stones;

they pasture flocks they have stolen.

³They drive away the orphan’s donkey

and take the widow’s ox in pledge.

⁴They thrust the needy from the path

and force all the poor of the land into hiding.

⁵Like wild donkeys in the desert,

the poor go about their labor of foraging food;

the wasteland provides food for their children.

⁶They gather fodder in the fields

and glean in the vineyards of the wicked.

⁷Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked;

they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold.

⁸They are drenched by mountain rains

and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.

⁹The fatherless child is snatched from the breast;

the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.

¹⁰Lacking clothes, they go about naked;

they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.

¹¹They crush olives among the terraces;

they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.

¹²The groans of the dying rise from the city,

and the souls of the wounded cry out for help.

But God charges no one with wrongdoing.

¹³“There are those who rebel against the light,

who do not know its ways

or stay in its paths.

¹⁴When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up,

kills the poor and needy,

and in the night steals forth like a thief.

¹⁵The eye of the adulterer watches for dusk;

he thinks, ‘No eye will see me,’

and he keeps his face concealed.

¹⁶In the dark, thieves break into houses,

but by day they shut themselves in;

they want nothing to do with the light.

¹⁷For all of them, midnight is their morning;

they make friends with the terrors of darkness.

¹⁸“Yet they are foam on the surface of the water;

their portion of the land is cursed,

so that no one goes to the vineyards.

¹⁹As heat and drought snatch away the melted snow,

so the grave snatches away those who have sinned.

²⁰The womb forgets them,

the worm feasts on them;

the wicked are no longer remembered

but are broken like a tree.

²¹They prey on the barren and childless woman,

and to the widow they show no kindness.

²²But God drags away the mighty by his power;

though they become established, they have no assurance of life.

²³He may let them rest in a feeling of security,

but his eyes are on their ways.

²⁴For a little while they are exalted, and then they are gone;

they are brought low and gathered up like all others;

they are cut off like heads of grain.

²⁵“If this is not so, who can prove me false

and reduce my words to nothing?”