Job 24:1-5

The Apparent Indifference of God

24:1 “Why are times not appointed by ¹  the Almighty? ² 

Why do those who know him not see his days?

24:2 Men ³  move boundary stones;

they seize the flock and pasture them. ⁴ 

24:3 They drive away the orphan’s donkey;

they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.

24:4 They turn the needy from the pathway,

and the poor of the land hide themselves together. ⁵ 

24:5 Like ⁶  wild donkeys in the desert

they ⁷  go out to their labor, ⁸ 

seeking diligently for food;

the wasteland provides ⁹  food for them

and for their children.

[24:1]  ¹ tn The preposition מִן (min) is used to express the cause (see GKC 389 §121.f).

[24:1]  ² tc The LXX reads “Why are times hidden from the Almighty?” as if to say that God is not interested in the events on the earth. The MT reading is saying that God fails to set the times for judgment and vindication and makes good sense as it stands.

[24:2]  ³ tn The line is short: “they move boundary stones.” So some commentators have supplied a subject, such as “wicked men.” The reason for its being wicked men is that to move the boundary stone was to encroach dishonestly on the lands of others (Deut 19:14; 27:17).

[24:2]  ⁴ tc The LXX reads “and their shepherd.” Many commentators accept this reading. But the MT says that they graze the flocks that they have stolen. The difficulty with the MT reading is that there is no suffix on the final verb – but that is not an insurmountable difference.

[24:4]  ⁵ sn Because of the violence and oppression of the wicked, the poor and needy, the widows and orphans, all are deprived of their rights and forced out of the ways and into hiding just to survive.

[24:5]  ⁶ tc The verse begins with הֵן (hen); but the LXX, Vulgate, and Syriac all have “like.” R. Gordis (Job, 265) takes הֵן (hen) as a pronoun “they” and supplies the comparative. The sense of the verse is clear in either case.

[24:5]  ⁷ tn That is, “the poor.”

[24:5]  ⁸ tc The MT has “in the working/labor of them,” or “when they labor.” Some commentators simply omit these words. Dhorme retains them and moves them to go with עֲרָבָה (’aravah), which he takes to mean “evening”; this gives a clause, “although they work until the evening.” Then, with many others, he takes לוֹ (lo) to be a negative and finishes the verse with “no food for the children.” Others make fewer changes in the text, and as a result do not come out with such a hopeless picture – there is some food found. The point is that they spend their time foraging for food, and they find just enough to survive, but it is a day-long activity. For Job, this shows how unrighteous the administration of the world actually is.

[24:5]  ⁹ tn The verb is not included in the Hebrew text but is supplied in the translation.