Chapter 24

¹“Why aren’t times laid up by the Almighty?

Why don’t those who know him see his days?

²There are people who remove the landmarks.

They violently take away flocks, and feed them.

³They drive away the donkey of the fatherless,

And they take the widow’s ox for a pledge.

⁴They turn the needy out of the way.

The poor of the earth all hide themselves.

⁵Behold, as wild donkeys in the desert,

They go forth to their work, seeking diligently for food;

The wilderness yields them bread for their children.

⁶They cut their provender in the field.

They glean the vineyard of the wicked.

⁷They lie all night naked without clothing,

And have no covering in the cold.

⁸They are wet with the showers of the mountains,

And embrace the rock for lack of a shelter.

⁹There are those who pluck the fatherless from the breast,

And take a pledge of the poor,

¹⁰So that they go around naked without clothing.

Being hungry, they carry the sheaves.

¹¹They make oil within the walls of these men.

They tread wine presses, and suffer thirst.

¹²From out of the populous city, men groan.

The soul of the wounded cries out,

Yet God doesn’t regard the folly.

¹³“These are of those who rebel against the light;

They don’t know the ways of it,

Nor abide in the paths of it.

¹⁴The murderer rises with the light.

He kills the poor and needy.

In the night he is like a thief.

¹⁵The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight,

Saying, ‘No eye shall see me.’

He disguises his face.

¹⁶In the dark they dig through houses.

They shut themselves up in the daytime.

They don’t know the light.

¹⁷For the morning is to all of them like thick darkness,

For they know the terrors of the thick darkness.

¹⁸“They are foam on the surface of the waters.

Their portion is cursed in the earth:

They don’t turn into the way of the vineyards.

¹⁹Drought and heat consume the snow waters;

So does Sheol those who have sinned.

²⁰The womb shall forget him.

The worm shall feed sweetly on him.

He shall be no more remembered.

Unrighteousness shall be broken as a tree.

²¹He devours the barren who don’t bear.

He shows no kindness to the widow.

²²Yet God preserves the mighty by his power.

He rises up who has no assurance of life.

²³God gives them security, and they rest in it.

His eyes are on their ways.

²⁴They are exalted; yet a little while, and they are gone.

Yes, they are brought low, they are taken out of the way as all others,

And are cut off as the tops of the ears of grain.

²⁵If it isn’t so now, who will prove me a liar,

And make my speech worth nothing?”