TRV
Translation
Complete Jewish Bible
"There are those who pluck orphans from the breast and [those who] take [the clothes of] the poor in pledge,
Berean Standard Bible
The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast; the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt.
American Standard Version
There are that pluck the fatherless from the breast, And take a pledge of the poor;
World English Bible Messianic
There are those who pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor,
Geneva Bible (1599)
They plucke the fatherles from the breast, and take the pledge of the poore.
Young's Literal Translation
They take violently away From the breast the orphan, And on the poor they lay a pledge.
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In the KJVVerse 13,446 of 31,102
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Commentary on Job 24 verses 1–12
1 ¶ Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know him not see his days?
2 Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.
3 They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow's ox for a pledge.
4 They turn the needy out of the way: the poor of the earth hide themselves together.
5 Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children.
6 They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked.
7 They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, that they have no covering in the cold.
8 They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter.
9 They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor.
10 They cause him to go naked without clothing, and they take away the sheaf from the hungry;
11 Which make oil within their walls, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst.
12 Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out: yet God layeth not folly to them.
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, Job 24:1. 1. He takes it for granted that times are not hidden from the Almighty; past times are not hidden from his judgment (Ecc 3:15), present times are not hidden from his providence (Mat 10:29), future times are not hidden from his prescience, Act 15:18. God governs the world, and therefore we may be sure he takes cognizance of it. Bad times are not hidden from him, though the bad men that make the times bad say one to another, He has forsaken the earth, Psa 94:6, Psa 94:7. Every man's times are in his hand, and under his eye, and therefore it is in his power to make the times of wicked men in this world miserable. He foresees the time of every man's death, and therefore, if wicked men die before they are punished for their wickedness, we cannot say, "They escaped him by surprise;" he foresaw it, nay, he ordered it. Before Job will enquire into the reasons of the prosperity of wicked men he asserts God's omniscience, as one prophet, in a similar case, asserts his righteousness (Jer 12:1), another his holiness (Hab 1:13), another his goodness to his own people, Psa 73:1. General truths must be held fast, though we may find it difficult to reconcile them to particular events. 2. He yet asserts that those who know him (that is, wise and good people who are acquainted with him, and with whom his secret is) do not see his day, - the day of his judging for them; this was the thing he complained of in his own case (Job 23:8), that he could not see God appearing on his behalf to plead his cause, - the day of his judging against open and notorious sinners, that is called his day, Psa 37:13. We believe that day will come, but we do not see it, because it is future, and its presages are secret. 3. Though this is a mystery of Providence, yet there is a reason for it, and we shall shortly know why the judgment is deferred; even the wisest, and those who know God best, do not yet see it. God will exercise their faith and patience, and excite their prayers for the coming of his kingdom, for which they are to cry day and night to him, Luk 18:7.
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: -
I. Tyrants, and those that do wrong under pretence of law and authority. It is a melancholy sight which has often been seen under the sun, wickedness in the place of judgment (Ecc 3:16), the unregarded tears of the oppressed, while on the side of the oppressors there was power (Ecc 4:1), the violent perverting of justice and judgment, Ecc 5:8. 1. They disseize their neighbours of their real estates, which came to them by descent from their ancestors. They remove the land-marks, under pretence that they were misplaced (Job 24:2), and so they encroach upon their neighbours' rights and think they effectually secure that to their posterity which they have got wrongfully, by making that to be an evidence for them which should have been an evidence for the rightful owner. This was forbidden by the law of Moses (Deu 19:14), under a curse, Deu 27:17. Forging or destroying deeds is now a crime equivalent to this. 2. They dispossess them of their personal estates, under colour of justice. They violently take away flocks, pretending they are forfeited, and feed thereof; as the rich man took the poor man's ewe lamb, Sa2 12:4. If a poor fatherless child has but an ass of his own to get a little money with, they find some colour or other to take it away, because the owner is not able to contest with them. It is all one if a widow has but an ox for what little husbandry she has; under pretence of distraining for some small debt, or arrears of rent, this ox shall be taken for a pledge, though perhaps it is the widow's all. God has taken it among the titles of his honour to be a Father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows; and therefore those will not be reckoned his friends that do not to their utmost protect and help them; but those he will certainly reckon with as his enemies that vex and oppress them. 3. They take all occasions to offer personal abuses to them, Job 24:4. They will mislead them if they can when they meet them on the high-way, so that the poor and needy are forced to hide themselves from them, having no other way to secure themselves from them. They love in their hearts to banter people, and to make fools of them, and do them a mischief if they can, especially to triumph over poor people, whom they turn out of the way of getting relief, threaten to punish them as vagabonds, and so force them to abscond, and laugh at them when they have done. Some understand those barbarous actions (Job 24:9, Job 24:10) to be done by those oppressors that pretend law for what they do: They pluck the fatherless from the breast; that is, having made poor infants fatherless, they make them motherless too; having taken away the father's life, they break the mother's heart, and so starve the children and leave them to perish. Pharaoh and Herod plucked children from the breast to the sword; and we read of children brought forth to the murderers, Hos 9:13. Those are inhuman murderers indeed that can with so much pleasure suck innocent blood. They take a pledge of the poor, and so they rob the spital; nay, they take the poor themselves for a pledge (as some read it), and probably it was under this pretence that they plucked the fatherless from the breast, distraining them for slaves, as Neh 5:5. Cruelty to the poor is great wickedness and cries aloud for vengeance. Those who show no mercy to such as lie at their mercy shall themselves have judgment without mercy. Another instance of their barbarous treatment of those they have advantage against is that they take from them even their necessary food and raiment; they squeeze them so with their extortion that they cause them to go naked without clothing (Job 24:10) and so catch their death. And if a poor hungry family has gleaned a sheaf of corn, to make a little cake of, that they may eat it and die, even that they take away from them, being well pleased to see them perish for want, while they themselves are fed to the full. 4. They are very oppressive to the labourers they employ in their service. They not only give them no wages, though the labourer is worthy of his hire (and this is a crying sin, Jam 5:4), but they will not so much as give them meat and drink: Those that carry their sheaves are hungry; so some read it (Job 24:10), and it agrees with Job 24:11, that those who make oil within their walls, and with a great deal of toil labour at the wine-presses, yet suffer thirst, which was worse than muzzling the mouth of the ox that treads out the corn. Those masters forget that they have a Master in heaven who will not allow the necessary supports of life to their servants and labourers, not caring whether they can live by their labour or no. 5. It is not only among the poor country people, but in the cities also, that we see the tears of the oppressed (Job 24:12): Men groan from out of the city, where the rich merchants and traders are as cruel with their poor debtors as the landlords in the country are with their poor tenants. In cities such cruel actions as these are more observed than in obscure corners of the country and the wronged have easier access to justice to right themselves; and yet the oppressors there fear neither the restraints of the law nor the just censures of their neighbours, but the oppressed groan and cry out like wounded men, and can no more ease and help themselves, for the oppressors are inexorable and deaf to their groans.
II. He speaks of robbers, and those that do wrong by downright force, as the bands of the Sabeans and Chaldeans, which had lately plundered him. He does not mention them particularly, lest he should seem partial to his own cause, and to judge of men (as we are apt to do) by what they are to us; but among the Arabians, the children of the east (Job's country), there were those that lived by spoil and rapine, making incursions upon their neighbours, and robbing travellers. See how they are described here, and what mischief they do, Job 24:5-8. 1. Their character is that they are as wild asses in the desert, untamed, untractable, unreasonable, Ishmael's character (Gen 16:12), fierce and furious, and under no restraint of law or government, Jer 2:23, Jer 2:24. They choose the deserts for their dwelling, that they may be lawless and unsociable, and that they may have opportunity of doing the more mischief. The desert is indeed the fittest place for such wild people, Job 39:6. But no desert can set men out of the reach of God's eye and hand. 2. Their trade is to steal, and to make a prey of all about them. They have chosen it as their trade; it is their work, because there is more to be got by it, and it is got more easily, than by an honest calling. They follow it as their trade; they follow it closely; they go forth to it as their work, as man goes forth to his labour, Psa 104:23. They are diligent and take pains at it: They rise betimes for a prey. If a traveller be out early, they will be out as soon to rob him. They live by it as a man lives by his trade: The wilderness (not the grounds there but the roads there) yieldeth food for them and for their children; they maintain themselves and their families by robbing on the high-way, and bless themselves in it without any remorse of compassion or conscience, and with as much security as if it were honestly got; as Ephraim, Hos 12:7, Hos 12:8. 3. See the mischief they do to the country. They not only rob travellers, but they make incursions upon their neighbours, and reap every one his corn in the field (Job 24:6), that is, they enter upon other people's ground, cut their corn, and carry it away as freely as if it were their own. Even the wicked gather the vintage, and it is their wickedness; or, as we read it, They gather the vintage of the wicked, and so one wicked man is made a scourge to another. What the wicked got by extortion (which is their way of stealing) these robbers get from them in their way of stealing; thus oftentimes are the spoilers spoiled, Isa 33:1. 4. The misery of those that fall into their hands (Job 24:7, Job 24:8): They cause the naked, whom they have stripped, not leaving them the clothes to their backs, to lodge, in the cold nights, without clothing, so that they are wet with the showers of the mountains, and, for want of a better shelter, embrace the rock, and are glad of a cave or den in it to preserve them from the injuries of the weather. Eliphaz had charged Job with such inhumanity as this, concluding that Providence would not thus have stripped him if he had not first stripped the naked of their clothing, Job 22:6. Job here tells him there were those that were really guilty of those crimes with which he was unjustly charged and yet prospered and had success in their villanies, the curse they laid themselves under working invisibly; and Job thinks it more just to argue as he did, from an open notorious course of wickedness inferring a secret and future punishment, than to argue as Eliphaz did, who from nothing but present trouble inferred a course of past secret iniquity. The impunity of these oppressors and spoilers is expressed in one word (Job 24:12): Yet God layeth not folly to them, that is, he does not immediately prosecute them with his judgments for these crimes, nor make them examples, and so evince their folly to all the world. He that gets riches, and not by right, at his end shall be a fool, Jer 17:11. But while he prospers he passes for a wise man, and God lays not folly to him until he saith, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, Luk 12:20.
Matthew Henry (1662–1714) — Commentary on the Whole Bible. This section covers verses 1–12. Public domain.
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Olympiodorus of AlexandriaAD 600
COMMENTARY ON JOB 24:9-12
“They have snatched the fatherless from the breast.” They have lamentably and mercilessly taken away the child who still nursed and hanged from his mother’s breast. “And they have deprived the outcast,” that is, they have also deprived the outcast of his properties by taking away what he had. “They have wrongfully caused others to sleep without clothing.” By wrongfully stripping others, who owed them nothing, they have caused them to love rest. “They have taken away the morsel of the hungry.” They have reduced them to extreme poverty and starvation. “They have unjustly laid ambush in narrow places.” They have laid ambush in hidden places; in fact, in larger places and roads they wait in ambush for those who have no chance to escape.“And they,” that is, all the impious persons, “have not known the righteous way.” “They have been cast forth from their cities and their houses.” This refers to those who wantonly sleep without clothing. They [the fatherless] have, in fact, suffered these things from these criminals, after being driven out of their city and their houses.
“And the soul of the children has groaned aloud.” From the bottom of their heart [they groaned], because they had no parents any longer who provided them with food.
Gregory the DialogistAD 604
65. When Heretics lack the good fortune of the present life, to weak minds they recommend by words of soft persuasion things that are wrong; but if the good fortune of the present time at all smiles upon them, they do not cease even by violence to draw those they are able. So that by the title of ‘fatherless’ they are denoted who are still delicate, being set within the pale of Holy Church, whose life their merciful Father by dying preserved, who are already brought forward to a good purpose of mind, but are not yet confirmed with any efficacy in good deeds. The Heretics, then, ‘do violence in preying on the fatherless,’ in that upon the weak minds of the faithful they make assault with violence in words and deeds. But ‘the common folk of the poor’ are the uninstructed multitude, which, if it had the riches of true knowledge, would never part with the covering of its faith. For genuine teachers are like a kind of senators within the bounds of Holy Church, who, while they multiply knowledge in the heart, abound in the true riches in themselves. But Heretics ‘spoil the common sort of the poor,’ in that whilst the learned they cannot, all the unlearned by their pestilent preaching they strip naked of the covering of the faith.
Source: Quotations drawn from early Church Fathers and historical Christian theologians (AD 100–1500). Some quotes address the surrounding passage context rather than this verse alone.
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SUMMARY
Job 24:9 starkly portrays the ruthless exploitation of the most vulnerable in society, depicting oppressors who violently separate nursing infants from their mothers and seize essential collateral from the desperately poor. This verse serves as a powerful indictment of human cruelty and economic injustice, forming a critical part of Job's broader argument that the wicked often prosper unchecked in this life, thereby challenging the simplistic retributive theology espoused by his friends. It highlights the profound suffering of the defenseless and raises unsettling questions about the immediate manifestation of divine justice on earth.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Job 24:9 employs several powerful literary devices to convey its message of profound injustice and evoke a strong emotional response. Imagery is central, particularly in the phrase "pluck the fatherless from the breast," which creates a visceral, disturbing mental picture of a helpless infant being violently torn from its most basic source of sustenance and comfort. This image is not merely descriptive; it functions as potent Symbolism, representing the ultimate violation of innocence and vulnerability. The "fatherless" and "poor" are symbolic of all who are defenseless, marginalized, and exploited by those in power. The extreme nature of the acts described also borders on Hyperbole, serving to emphasize the shocking degree of moral depravity and the depth of the oppressors' cruelty, perhaps suggesting that their actions are so heinous they defy normal human comprehension and moral boundaries. Finally, the verse evokes strong Pathos, appealing directly to the reader's emotions by presenting such egregious acts against the most vulnerable, thereby eliciting profound sympathy for the victims and righteous outrage against the perpetrators.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Job 24:9 profoundly challenges the conventional understanding of divine justice, forcing a confrontation with the perplexing reality of unpunished evil in the world. It underscores the biblical truth that God is inherently just and has a special concern for the oppressed, yet it simultaneously grapples with the unsettling observation that the wicked often prosper and inflict suffering without immediate visible consequence. This tension is central to the book of Job, which ultimately asserts God's sovereignty and wisdom beyond human comprehension, even when His ways seem inscrutable to human eyes. The verse also highlights the pervasive theme of human depravity and the urgent need for divine intervention to rectify the deep-seated injustices of the world. It serves as a timeless reminder that true righteousness involves not only personal piety but also active compassion and advocacy for the vulnerable, reflecting God's own character and heart for justice.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Job 24:9 serves as a stark mirror reflecting the enduring reality of injustice in our world, compelling us to confront the uncomfortable truth that the vulnerable are often exploited, and oppressors frequently escape immediate accountability. This verse challenges any simplistic theology that promises immediate divine retribution for all wrongdoing, inviting us instead into a deeper, more nuanced understanding of God's justice that often unfolds over time and culminates in eternity. For us today, it is a clarion call to open our eyes to the suffering around us, particularly among those who are marginalized, voiceless, and defenseless. It demands that we move beyond passive observation to active identification with the oppressed, advocating for their rights, providing for their needs, and working tirelessly to dismantle systems of injustice. While we may not always see immediate divine intervention, this verse reminds us that God sees every tear and every act of cruelty, and His ultimate justice is assured, motivating us to be instruments of His compassion and righteousness in a broken world, trusting that His perfect timing will prevail.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Why does Job focus on such extreme examples of injustice, like plucking infants from the breast?
Answer: Job's focus on such extreme and visceral examples of injustice, like the plucking of infants from the breast and the taking of pledges from the poor, serves a critical rhetorical and theological purpose within his discourse. He is not merely cataloging general societal ills; he is presenting the most egregious and undeniable acts of cruelty to directly contradict the simplistic retributive theology of his friends. His friends argue that God always punishes the wicked in this life, and that suffering is a direct result of sin. By pointing to oppressors who commit acts of unimaginable depravity against the most defenseless—acts that violate the most basic human instincts and even specific Mosaic laws (e.g., Deuteronomy 24:6 regarding pledges)—and yet seemingly prosper, Job provides irrefutable evidence against their tidy theological framework. These examples are designed to shock, to highlight the depth of moral decay, and to underscore the perplexing reality that divine justice is not always immediately or visibly dispensed on earth, thus deepening the central theological dilemma of the book of Job.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Job 24:9, with its raw depiction of the exploitation of the fatherless and the poor, finds its ultimate fulfillment and answer in the person and work of Jesus Christ. While Job grapples with the perplexing reality of unpunished evil, the New Testament reveals God's perfect justice and compassion fully embodied in His Son. Jesus Himself identified profoundly with the poor and the marginalized, declaring His mission to bring good news to the poor and to proclaim release to the captives (Luke 4:18). He consistently championed the cause of the vulnerable, condemning those who oppressed them (e.g., Matthew 23:14). Furthermore, Jesus's sacrifice on the cross is the ultimate act of divine justice and redemption, where He, the innocent Lamb of God, bore the weight of all sin, including the sin of oppression and injustice, offering a path to reconciliation and transformation for humanity. The resurrection of Christ assures us that death and injustice do not have the final word. Ultimately, Christ will return as the righteous Judge, establishing His kingdom where every wrong will be righted, and true justice will prevail (Revelation 20:11-15). Thus, the lament of Job 24:9, though profoundly unsettling, points forward to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and who will one day wipe away every tear and usher in an era of perfect justice and peace (Revelation 21:4).