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.
1 tn Heb “They are among those who.”
2 tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.
3 tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).
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.
5 tn Heb “saying.”