Job 24:10 Kommentar

Job having by his complaints in the foregoing chapter given vent to his passion, and thereby gained some ease, breaks them off abruptly, and now applies himself to a further discussion of the doctrinal controversy between him and his friends concerning the prosperity of wicked people. That many live at ease who yet are ungodly and profane, and despise all the exercises of devotion, he had shown, ch. 21. Now here he goes further, and shows that many who are mischievous to mankind, and live in open defiance to all the laws of justice and common honesty, yet thrive and succeed in their unrighteous practices; and we do not see them reckoned with in this world. What he had said before (Job 12:6), "The tabernacles of robbers prosper," he here enlarges upon. He lays down his general proposition (Job 24:1), that the punishment of wicked people is not so visible and apparent as his friends supposed, and then proves it by an induction of particulars. I. Those that openly do wrong to their poor neighbours are not reckoned with, nor the injured righted (Job 24:2-12), though the former are very barbarous (Job 24:21, Job 24:22). II. Those that secretly practise mischief often go undiscovered and unpunished (Job 24:13-17). III. That God punished such by secret judgments and reserves them for future judgments (Job 24:18-20, and Job 24:23-25), so that, upon the whole matter, we cannot say that all who are in trouble are wicked; for it is certain that all who are in prosperity are not righteous.

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 24 This chapter contains the second part of Job's answer to the last discourse of Eliphaz, in which he shows that wicked men, those of the worst characters, prosper in the world, and go through it with impunity; he lays down this as a certain truth, that though no time is hid from God, yet they that are most familiar with him, and know most of him, do not see, and cannot observe, any days of his for judging and punishing wicked men in, this life, Job 24:1; and instances in men guilty of injustice, violence, oppression, cruelty, and inhumanity, to their neighbours, and yet God lays not folly to them, or charges them with sin, and punishes them for it, Job 24:2; and in persons that commit the most atrocious crimes in secret, such as murderers, adulterers, and thieves, Job 24:13; he allows that there is a curse upon their portion, and that the grave shall consume them, and they shall be remembered no more, Job 24:18; and because of their ill treatment of others, though they may be in safety and prosperity, and be exalted for a while, they shall be brought low and cut off by death, but generally speaking are not punished in this life, Job 24:21; and concludes with the greatest assurance of being in the right, and having truth on his side, Job 24:25.

They cause him to go naked without clothing,.... Having taken his raiment from him for a pledge, or refusing to give him his wages for his work, whereby he might procure clothes to cover him, but that being withheld, is obliged to go naked, or next to it: and they take away the sheaf from the hungry; the Vulgate Latin version renders it, "ears of corn", such as the poor man plucked as he walked through a corn field, in order to rub them in his hand, and eat of, as the disciples of Christ, with which the Pharisees were offended, Luk 6:1; and which, according to a law in Israel, was allowed to be done, Deu 23:25; but now so severe were these wicked men to these poor persons, that they took away from them such ears of corn: but it is more likely that this sheaf was what the poor had gleaned, and what they had been picking up ear by ear, and had bound up into a sheaf, in order to carry home and beat it out, and then grind the corn of it, and make a loaf of it to satisfy their hunger; but so cruel and hardhearted were these men, that they took it away from them, which they had been all, or the greatest part of the day, picking up; unless it can be thought there was a custom in Job's country, which was afterwards a law among the Jews, that if a sheaf was forgotten by the owner, and left in the field when he gathered in his corn, he was not to go back for it, and fetch it, but leave it to the poor, Deu 24:19; but these men would not suffer them to have it, but took it away from them; or the words may be rendered, as they are by some, "the hungry carry the sheaf" (p) that is, of their rich oppressive masters, who having reaped their fields for them, and bound up the corn in sheaves, carry it home for them; and yet they do not so much as give them food for their labour, or wages to purchase food to satisfy their; hunger, and so dealt with them worse than the oxen were, according to the Jewish law, which were not to be muzzled when they trod out the corn, but might eat of it, Deu 25:4. (p) "et famelici gestant manipulum", Tigurine version, Mercerus; so Schultens, Michaelis.

From the naked, and those going without clothing and a hungered, they have taken away the ears of corn. What he calls naked he repeats in the words without clothing, but it is one thing to be naked and another thing to go naked. Thus every person that does neither what is good nor what is bad is naked and idle; but he that does what is evil 'goes naked,' in that without the covering of good practice he is going by the road of wickedness. But there are some who, as knowing the evil of their wickedness, are in haste to be filled with the bread of righteousness, and hunger to receive the sayings of Holy Scripture; and these, as often as they turn over in thought the sentences of the Fathers for the improvement of the mind, as it were from a good crop they carry ears of corn. And so 'from the naked and those going without clothing and a hungered, Heretics take away ears of corn;' in that whether any persons be idle and never exercise themselves in any thing good, or whether they are going by the way of shamelessness without the covering of good practice, even if they at any time have now the desire to return to repentance, and long for the food of the word, from those same being a hungered they take away the ears of corn, because in the minds of those persons by mischievous persuasions they destroy the sentences of the Fathers. Nor do we improperly say that the ears of corn signify the sentences of the Fathers, in that often whilst they are delivered in forms of figurative diction, we remove the covering of the letter from them like the chaff of corn, that we may be regaled with the marrow of the Spirit.

"They have wrongfully caused others to sleep without clothing." By wrongfully stripping others, who owed them nothing, they have caused them to love rest. "They have taken away the morsel of the hungry." They have reduced them to extreme poverty and starvation.

This would be tolerable somehow if they wanted to take away things from people who at least had enough. Thus he continues increasing their evils saying, "From the naked," those not having any clothes, "from those going about without any clothes," who from extreme need must even go out in public naked without clothes which pertains to a great lack of clothing. To show that they suffered want in food also he says, "and from the hungry." They cannot take away anything of great value from these men, but they are not ashamed to steal what little they have, and so he then says, "they have stolen the ears of wheat," as if to say: They have not taken from them a harvest which they do not have but some small ears of grain which they had collected for themselves.

Do not be envious. Of the house wisely built. Counsel necessary in war. Save life when thou canst. Of honey and the honey-comb. Of the just that falleth seven times. We should not rejoice at the misfortune of others. Ruin of the wicked. Fear God and the king. Prepare thy work. The field of the sluggard, and the vineyard of the foolish, described.

They cause him to go naked - These cruel, hard-hearted oppressors seize the cloth made for the family wear, or the wool and flax out of which such clothes should be made. And they take away the sheaf - Seize the grain as soon as it is reaped, that they may pay themselves the exorbitant rent at which they have leased out their land: and thus the sheaf - the thraves and ricks, by which they should have been supported, are taken away from the hungry.

(Job 24:1-25) Why is it that, seeing that the times of punishment (Eze 30:3; "time" in the same sense) are not hidden from the Almighty, they who know Him (His true worshippers, Job 18:21) do not see His days (of vengeance; Joe 1:15; Pe2 3:10)? Or, with UMBREIT less simply, making the parallel clauses more nicely balanced, Why are not times of punishment hoarded up ("laid up"; Job 21:19; appointed) by the Almighty? that is, Why are they not so appointed as that man may now see them? as the second clause shows. Job does not doubt that they are appointed: nay, he asserts it (Job 21:30); what he wishes is that God would let all now see that it is so.

(See on Job 22:6). In Job 24:7 a like sin is alluded to: but there he implies open robbery of garments in the desert; here, the more refined robbery in civilized life, under the name of a "pledge." Having stripped the poor, they make them besides labor in their harvest-fields and do not allow them to satisfy their hunger with any of the very corn which they carry to the heap. Worse treatment than that of the ox, according to Deu 25:4. Translate: "they (the poor laborers) hungering carry the sheaves" [UMBREIT].