24:1 “Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment? Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?
24:2 There are those who move boundary stones; they pasture flocks they have stolen.
24:3 They drive away the orphan’s donkey and take the widow’s ox in pledge.
24:4 They thrust the needy from the path and force all the poor of the land into hiding.
24:5 Like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go about their labor of foraging food; the wasteland provides food for their children.
24:6 They gather fodder in the fields and glean in the vineyards of the wicked.
24:7 Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked; they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold.
24:8 They are drenched by mountain rains and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.
24:9 The fatherless child is snatched from the breast; the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.
24:10 Lacking clothes, they go about naked; they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.
24:11 They crush olives among the terraces*; they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst. / *The meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain.
24:12 The groans of the dying rise from the city, and the souls of the wounded cry out for help. But God charges no one with wrongdoing.
24:13 “There are those who rebel against the light, who do not know its ways or stay in its paths.
24:14 When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up, kills the poor and needy, and in the night steals forth like a thief.
24:15 The eye of the adulterer watches for dusk; he thinks, ‘No eye will see me,’ and he keeps his face concealed.
24:16 In the dark, thieves break into houses, but by day they shut themselves in; they want nothing to do with the light.
24:17 For all of them, midnight is their morning; they make friends with the terrors of darkness.
24:18 “Yet they are foam on the surface of the water; their portion of the land is cursed, so that no one goes to the vineyards.
24:19 As heat and drought snatch away the melted snow, so the grave snatches away those who have sinned.
24:20 The womb forgets them, the worm feasts on them; the wicked are no longer remembered but are broken like a tree.
24:21 They prey on the barren and childless woman, and to the widow they show no kindness.
24:22 But God drags away the mighty by his power; though they become established, they have no assurance of life.
24:23 He may let them rest in a feeling of security, but his eyes are on their ways.
24:24 For a little while they are exalted, and then they are gone; they are brought low and gathered up like all others; they are cut off like heads of grain.
24:25 “If this is not so, who can prove me false and reduce my words to nothing?”