Job 24

¹ Why has not Shaddai his own store of times, and why do his faithful never see his Days?[*a]

² The wicked move boundary-marks away, they carry off flock and shepherd.

³ Some drive away the orphan’s donkey, and take the widow’s ox for a security.

⁴ Beggars, now, avoid the roads, and all the poor of the land must go into hiding.

⁵ Like wild donkeys in the desert, they go out, driven by the hunger of their children, to seek food on the barren steppes.

⁶ They must do the harvesting in the scoundrel’s field, they must do the picking in the vineyards of the wicked.

¹⁰ They go about naked, lacking clothes, and starving while they carry the sheaves.

¹¹ They have no stones for pressing oil, they tread the winepresses, yet they are parched with thirst.

⁷ They spend the night naked, lacking clothes, with no covering against the cold.

⁸ Mountain rainstorms cut them through, shelterless, they hug the rocks.

⁹ Fatherless children are robbed of their lands, and poor men have their cloaks seized as security.

¹² From the towns come the groans of the dying and the gasp of wounded men crying for help. Yet God remains deaf to their appeal!

¹³ Others of them hate the light, know nothing of its ways, avoid its paths.

¹⁴ When all is dark the murderer leaves his bed to kill the poor and needy. All night long prowls the thief,

¹⁵ The eye of the adulterer watches for twilight, ‘No one will see me’ he mutters as he masks his face.

¹⁷ For all of them, morning is their darkest hour, because they know its terrors.

²⁵ Is this not so? Who can prove me a liar or show that my words have no substance?