ao:eng_webu
Job 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 , they go out to their work, seeking diligently for food. The wilderness yields them bread for their children.
6They cut their food in the field. They glean the 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 , 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 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 its ways, nor stay in its paths.
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 will 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 .
19Drought and heat consume the snow waters, so does Sheol those who have sinned.
20The womb will forget him. The worm will feed sweetly on him. He will be no more remembered. Unrighteousness will 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?”
Slow reading
Read Job 24 three times
Guided passes through short verse groups: read it whole, watch the words, then pray it back. Phrases to stop on along the way, with deeper explanation held back until you have read the verses yourself.
Ask about this chapter
Have a question about Job 24?
Ask anything about this chapter. Every answer names the verses it rests on and links straight to them, highlighted in the reader.
Study together
Questions on Job 24
Every comment is tied to a place in the text: a verse, a span of verses, or one section of the study. Ask what you do not understand, and answer others from Scripture.
Sign in to ask a question or answer one. Reading always stays open to everyone.
Questions this passage answers
Why does God allow suffering?
Scripture never gives one tidy reason for all suffering. It says that pain entered a good world through sin, that God is neither its author nor its prisoner, that he uses it without approving of it, and that he entered it himself in Christ rather than explaining it from a distance. The Bible answers the question with a person before it answers it with an argument.
Why does God seem silent?
God's apparent silence is felt by some of the most faithful people in Scripture, not only by the weak in faith. David, Job and Habakkuk all cried out into what felt like empty air. Scripture never rebukes them for asking. It records their words as prayer, answers them in its own time, and teaches that God's silence is never his absence.