Job
Job 24
1 “Why have the seasons escaped the Lord’s notice,
2 while the ungodly step across the boundary,
seizing a flock along with its shepherd?
3 They drive off the orphans’ donkey,
and take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
4 They turn the powerless out of the right way;
the gentle of the earth hide themselves together.
5 They have gone off like donkeys in a field,
going out on my account to their own work;
his bread is sweet to his young ones.
6 They reaped a field that was not theirs, before its time;
the powerless worked the vineyards of the ungodly without wages and without food.
7 They made many lie naked, with no clothes,
and took away the covering of their life.
8 They are soaked by the rain off the mountains;
having no shelter, they wrap themselves in the rock.
9 They snatched an orphan from the breast,
and pressed down the one who had already fallen.
10 They made men lie naked, and did it unjustly,
and took the morsel from the hungry.
11 They lay in ambush in narrow places, unjustly,
and did not know the righteous way.
12 Men were being driven out of the city and out of their own houses,
and the soul of little children groaned aloud.
Why has he not looked into these things?
13 They were on the earth and took no notice;
they did not know the way of righteousness,
and they did not walk its paths.
14 But he knew their works and handed them over to darkness,
and at night such a man is like a thief.
15 The adulterer’s eye watched for the dark.
He said, ‘No eye will notice me,’
and he put a covering over his face.
16 In the dark he digs through houses;
by day they seal themselves in;
they have not known the light.
17 For to all of them morning is the shadow of death,
since each will know the terrors of the shadow of death.
18 He is light on the face of the water.
Let their portion on the earth be cursed;
19 let their plants show up withered on the ground,
for they snatched away the sheaf of orphans.
20 Then his sin was remembered,
and he vanished like a mist of dew.
Let what he did be paid back to him,
and let every unrighteous man be broken like a tree past curing.
21 For he did no good to the barren woman,
and showed no mercy to a weak woman.
22 In wrath he overthrew the powerless.
So when he rises up, he cannot count on his own life.
23 When he falls sick, let him not hope to be made well;
he will fall by disease.
24 His high place has harmed many;
he has withered like a mallow in the heat,
or like an ear of grain that falls from the stalk by itself.
25 But if it is not so, who will say that I speak falsely,
and make my words count for nothing?”