Why does God not ask?
1 Why is what happens hidden from God?
Why do his faithful never see his justice?
2 The wicked remove landmarks
and steal both flocks and shepherds.
3 They seize the orphan’s ass
and for a pledge take the widow’s ox.
4 The needy stay far from the road,
the poor go into hiding.
5 Like wild asses in the wasteland,
they look for food;
the poor toil in the night,
there is no food for their children!
6 They gather fodder in the fields,
work in the vineyards of the wicked.
7 Destitute, they lie down naked,
shivering in the freezing cold.
8 Drenched with mountain rains,
they hug the rocks for lack of shelter.
9 The fatherless child is snatched from the breast,
the infant of the poor seized for a debt.
10 Without clothes, they go naked,
starving as they carry the sheaves.
11 Between the millstones they crush olives;
they tread the winepress but suffer thirst.
12 In the city the dying groan,
and the wounded cry out for help
but God pays no attention.
13 Many rebel against the light,
they do not know its way or stay in its path.
14 When dawn breaks, the murderer rises
to kill the poor and the helpless.
15 The adulterer waits for dusk,
thinking that no eye watches him.
At night the thief walks about
and puts a mask over his face,
16 ready to break into the houses
that he chose during the day.
17 Morning is their darkest hour
the time for them to fear.
18 The wicked are foam on the face of the waters;
their portion of the land is cursed,
and no one goes to their vineyards.
19 As drought and heat snap up the thawed snow,
so Sheol swallows up the sinner,
20 and the womb which formed him, forgets him.
Evil men are no longer remembered,
like a fallen tree they are broken.
21 They preyed on the barren, childless woman,
and showed no kindness to the wi dow.
22 But the Powerful stands against them and drags away the mighty.
23 He may let them feel secure,
but his eyes are upon their ways.
24 They are momentarily exalted, and then gone;
they wither and fade like a weed.
They are cut off like heads of grain.
25 If this is not so, who can prove me wrong
and reduce my words to nothing?
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Comments Job, Chapter 24
• 24.1 A terrible accusation against God who keeps silent when the oppressed are before him. Few prophets expressed the horror of human evil more forcefully.
The poor go into hiding. It is a fact that the media has made us more aware of universal misery and, doubtless, we see there a result of the Gospel. It is a fact that this trend has affected also other religions, which have opened up in recent years. Every country hides its poor and the rich are separated so that they rarely meet the poor, and consequently ignore them. That would be nothing if God did not also appear to forget the poor (and accept that his Church so easily forgets to bring them the Gospel).
• 14. This paragraph seems to be out of place here. The God of light allows the presence of dark areas on earth, where the children of darkness are at work.
Paragraph 24:18-23 would be better located after 27:23.