Job 24 — The Holy Bible

The Way of the Wicked

“Why have the times escaped the Lord's notice?

“Why have the ungodly stepped over the boundary,

Snatching away the flock with the shepherd?

They have led away the donkey of the orphans

And have taken the widow's ox as a pledge.

They have turned aside the weak from the right way;

The gentle of the land have hidden themselves together.

They departed like donkeys in the field.

Contrary to me, they went forth to their own pursuits.

Their bread was sweet to their little ones.

For they harvested a field that was not their own before the time,

And the weak worked the vineyard of the ungodly

Without pay or food.

They caused many naked to sleep without clothing,

And they took away the covering of their life.

They are wet with the showers of the mountains

And have huddled around the rock for want of shelter.

They have snatched the orphan from the breast

And have humiliated the banished.

They have unjustly caused them to sleep without clothing,

And they have taken away the morsel from the hungry.

They have wrongfully laid snares in narrow places

And have not known the way of righteousness.

They have cast the weak out of the city and their own houses,

And the soul of the infants sighed greatly.

Why then has He not visited them?

“They are ones on the earth who do not know the Lord,

And they do not understand the way of righteousness,

Nor do they walk in His paths.

But He knows their works and delivered them into darkness;

And one shall be like a thief in the night.

For the eye of the adulterer watches for the darkness,

Saying, ‘No eye will perceive me’;

And he puts a covering on his face.

In the dark he breaks into houses;

In the daytime they seal themselves up;

They do not know the light.

For in due time, the shadow of death will be the same to them,

Because they shall know the troubles of the shadow of death.

“He is swift on the face of the waters;

May his portion be cursed on earth.

May their plants wither on earth,

For they have taken away from the orphans

Even the smallest portions.

Then his sin is recalled to memory,

And he vanishes like a mist of dew;

But what he has done, may it be recompensed to him,

And may every wrongdoer be crushed like rotten wood.

For he has not treated the barren woman well,

And showed no mercy to the feeble woman.

“In his anger, he overturns the weak;

Therefore when he rises up,

No one believes his own life is safe.

When he falls sick, let him not hope to recover,

But let him perish by disease.

For his exaltation mistreated many,

But he has withered as mallows in the heat,

Or as an ear of corn falling on its own from the stalk.

“If it is not so, who says I speak falsely

And will make my speech worth nothing?”