5 Like asses in the waste land they go out to their work, looking for food with care; from the waste land they get bread for their children.
Is the number of their months fixed by you? or is the time when they give birth ordered by you? They are bent down, they give birth to their young, they let loose the fruit of their body. Their young ones are strong, living in the open country; they go out and do not come back again.
Man goes out to his work, and to his business, till the evening.
By your sword will you get your living and you will be your brother's servant; but when your power is increased his yoke will be broken from off your neck.
Their produce is taken by him who has no food, and their grain goes to the poor, and he who is in need of water gets it from their spring.
He who is purposing death gets up before day, so that he may put to death the poor and those in need.
For they take no rest till they have done evil; their sleep is taken away if they have not been the cause of someone's fall.
For they have made their hearts ready like an oven, while they are waiting secretly; their wrath is sleeping all night; in the morning it is burning like a flaming fire.
For they have gone up to Assyria like an ass going by himself; Ephraim has given money to get lovers.
Her rulers are like loud-voiced lions in her; her judges are wolves of the evening, crushing up the bones before the morning.
So they took Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the Praetorium. It was early. They themselves did not go into the Praetorium, so that they might not become unclean, but might take the Passover.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 24
Commentary on Job 24 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 24
Job having by his complaints in the foregoing chapter given vent to his passion, and thereby gained some ease, breaks them off abruptly, and now applies himself to a further discussion of the doctrinal controversy between him and his friends concerning the prosperity of wicked people. That many live at ease who yet are ungodly and profane, and despise all the exercises of devotion, he had shown, ch. 21. Now here he goes further, and shows that many who are mischievous to mankind, and live in open defiance to all the laws of justice and common honesty, yet thrive and succeed in their unrighteous practices; and we do not see them reckoned with in this world. What he had said before (ch. 12:6), "The tabernacles of robbers prosper,' he here enlarges upon. He lays down his general proposition (v. 1), that the punishment of wicked people is not so visible and apparent as his friends supposed, and then proves it by an induction of particulars.
Job 24:1-12
Job's friends had been very positive in it that they should soon see the fall of wicked people, how much soever they might prosper for a while. By no means, says Job; though times are not hidden from the Almighty, yet those that know him do not presently see his day, v. 1.
For the proof of this, that wicked people prosper, Job specifies two sorts of unrighteous ones, whom all the world saw thriving in their iniquity:-
Job 24:13-17
These verses describe another sort of sinners who therefore go unpunished, because they go undiscovered. They rebel against the light, v. 13. Some understand it figuratively: they sin against the light of nature, the light of God's law, and that of their own consciences; they profess to know God, but they rebel against the knowledge they have of him, and will not be guided and governed, commanded and controlled, by it. Others understand it literally: they have the day-light and choose the night as the most advantageous season for their wickedness. Sinful works are therefore called works of darkness, because he that does evil hates the light (Jn. 3:20), knows not the ways thereof, that is, keeps out of the way of it, or, if he happen to be seen, abides not where he thinks he is known. So that he here describes the worst of sinners,-those that sin wilfully, and against the convictions of their own consciences, whereby they add rebellion to their sin,-those that sin deliberately, and with a great deal of plot and contrivance, using a thousand arts to conceal their villanies, fondly imagining that, if they can but hide them from the eye of men, they are safe, but forgetting that there is no darkness or shadow of death in which the workers of iniquity can hide themselves from God's eye, ch. 34:22. In this paragraph Job specifies three sorts of sinners that shun the light:-
Job 24:18-25
Job here, in the conclusion of his discourse,