24:17 You must not pervert justice due a resident foreigner or an orphan, or take a widow’s garment as security for a loan.
22:6 “For you took pledges 1 from your brothers
for no reason,
and you stripped the clothing from the naked. 2
24:3 They drive away the orphan’s donkey;
they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
24:9 The fatherless child is snatched 3 from the breast, 4
the infant of the poor is taken as a pledge. 5
1 tn The verb חָבַל (khaval) means “to take pledges.” In this verse Eliphaz says that Job not only took as pledge things the poor need, like clothing, but he did it for no reason.
2 tn The “naked” here refers to people who are poorly clothed. Otherwise, a reading like the NIV would be necessary: “you stripped the clothes…[leaving them] naked.” So either he made them naked by stripping their garments off, or they were already in rags.
3 tn The verb with no expressed subject is here again taken in the passive: “they snatch” becomes “[child] is snatched.”
4 tn This word is usually defined as “violence; ruin.” But elsewhere it does mean “breast” (Isa 60:16; 66:11), and that is certainly what it means here.
5 tc The MT has a very brief and strange reading: “they take as a pledge upon the poor.” This could be taken as “they take a pledge against the poor” (ESV). Kamphausen suggested that instead of עַל (’al, “against”) one should read עוּל (’ul, “suckling”). This is supported by the parallelism. “They take as pledge” is also made passive here.