Job 24:13-17

24:13 There are those ¹  who rebel against the light;

they do not know its ways

and they do not stay on its paths.

24:14 Before daybreak ²  the murderer rises up;

he kills the poor and the needy;

in the night he is ³  like a thief. ⁴ 

24:15 And the eye of the adulterer watches for the twilight,

thinking, ⁵  ‘No eye can see me,’

and covers his face with a mask.

24:16 In the dark the robber ⁶  breaks into houses, ⁷ 

but by day they shut themselves in; ⁸ 

they do not know the light. ⁹ 

24:17 For all of them, ¹⁰  the morning is to them

like deep darkness;

they are friends with the terrors of darkness.

[24:13]  ¹ tn Heb “They are among those who.”

[24:14]  ² tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.

[24:14]  ³ tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).

[24:14]  ⁴ sn The point is that he is like a thief in that he works during the night, just before the daylight, when the advantage is all his and the victim is most vulnerable.

[24:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “saying.”

[24:16]  ⁶ tn The phrase “the robber” has been supplied in the English translation for clarification.

[24:16]  ⁷ tc This is not the idea of the adulterer, but of the thief. So some commentators reverse the order and put this verse after v. 14.

[24:16]  ⁸ tc The verb חִתְּמוּ (khittÿmu) is the Piel from the verb חָתַם (khatam, “to seal”). The verb is now in the plural, covering all the groups mentioned that work under the cover of darkness. The suggestion that they “seal,” i.e., “mark” the house they will rob, goes against the meaning of the word “seal.”

[24:16]  ⁹ tc Some commentators join this very short colon to the beginning of v. 17: “they do not know the light. For together…” becomes “for together they have not known the light.”

[24:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “together.”