Job’s Eighth Speech, Continued

• 24 “Why are not times kept by Shaddai,
• and why do not those who know him see his days?
• 2 They[fn] remove border stones;
• they seize flocks, and they pasture them.
• 3 They drive away the donkey of orphans;
• they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
• 4 They thrust the poor off the road;
• the needy of the earth hide themselves together.[fn]
• 5 “Look, like wild donkeys in the desert
• they[fn] go out to their labor as searchers for the prey;
• the wilderness is[fn] their[fn] food for the young.
• 6 They reap their[fn] fodder in the field,
• and they glean in the vineyard of the wicked.
• 7 They spend the night naked, without[fn] clothing,
• and they have no garment in the cold.
• 8 They are wet from the rainstorm of the mountains,[fn]
• and they cling to the rock without[fn] refuge.
• 9 “They[fn] snatch the orphan from the breast,
• and they take a pledge against the needy.[fn]
• 10 They[fn] go about naked, without clothing,
• and hungry, they carry the sheaves.[fn]
• 11 Between their terraces they press out oil;
• they tread the presses, but[fn] they are thirsty.
• 12 From the city people groan,
• and the throat[fn] of the wounded cries for help;
• yet[fn] God does not regard it as unseemly .[fn]
• 13 “Those are among the ones rebelling against the light;
• they do not recognize his ways,
• and they do not stay in his paths.
• 14 At dusk[fn] the murderer rises;
• he kills the needy and the poor,
• and in the night he is like a[fn] thief.
• 15 And the eye of the adulterer waits for dusk,
• saying, ‘No eye will see me,’[fn]
• and he places a covering on his face.
• 16 He digs through houses in the darkness;
• by day they shut themselves in—
• they do not know the light
• 17 because morning likewise is to them deep darkness;
• indeed, they know about the terrors of deep darkness.
• 18 “He himself[fn] is swift on the water’s surface;
• their portion is cursed in the land.
• No one turns toward the path of their vineyards .[fn]
• 19 Drought and heat snatch away the snow waters,
• like Sheol snatches away those[fn] who have sinned.
• 20 The womb forgets him.
• The maggot feasts on him until he is no longer remembered,
• and wickedness is broken like a[fn] tree.
• 21 He feeds on the barren, who does not have a child,
• and does no good to the widow.
• 22 Yet[fn] he[fn] carries off the tyrants by his strength;
• if he rises up, then[fn] he[fn] cannot be certain of life.[fn]
• 23 He[fn] gives security to him, and he is[fn] supported,
• but[fn] his eyes are upon their ways.
• 24 They are exalted a little while, then[fn] they are gone .[fn]
• And they are brought low; they are cut off like all others,
• and like the heads of grain they wither away.
• 25 “And if it is not so, then who can prove me a liar
• and reduce my word to nothing?”