24:1 “Why are times not kept by Shaddai? Why do those who know him not see his days?
24:2 There are those who move boundary markers; they carry off flocks and pasture them;
24:3 they drive away the orphan’s donkey; as collateral, they seize the widow’s ox.
24:4 They push the needy out of the way — the poor of the land are forced into hiding;
24:5 like wild donkeys in the wilderness, they have to go out and scavenge food, [hoping that] the desert will provide food for their children.
24:6 They must reap in fields that are not their own and gather late grapes in the vineyards of the wicked.
24:7 They pass the night without clothing, naked, uncovered in the cold,
24:8 wet with mountain rain, and hugging the rock for lack of shelter.
24:9 “There are those who pluck orphans from the breast and [those who] take [the clothes of] the poor in pledge,
24:10 so that they go about stripped, unclothed; they go hungry, as they carry sheaves [of grain];
24:11 between these men’s rows [of olives], they make oil; treading their winepresses, they suffer thirst.
24:12 Men are groaning in the city, the mortally wounded are crying for help, yet God finds nothing amiss!
24:13 “There are those who rebel against the light — they don’t know its ways or stay in its paths.
24:14 The murderer rises with the light to kill the poor and needy; while at night he is like a thief.
24:15 The eye of the adulterer too waits for twilight; he thinks, ‘No eye will see me’; but [to be sure], he covers his face.
24:16 When it’s dark, they break into houses; in the daytime, they stay out of sight. [None of them] know the light.
24:17 For to all of them deep darkness is like morning, for the terrors of deep darkness are familiar to them.
24:18 “May they be scum on the surface of the water, may their share of land be cursed, may no one turn on the way of their vineyards,
24:19 may drought and heat steal away their snow water and Sh’ol those who have sinned.
24:20 May the womb forget them, may worms find them sweet, may they no longer be remembered — thus may iniquity be snapped like a stick.
24:21 They devour childless women and give no help to widows.
24:22 “Yet God keeps pulling the mighty along — they get up, even when not trusting their own lives.
24:23 However, even if God lets them rest in safety, his eyes are on their ways.
24:24 They are exalted for a little while; and then they are gone, brought low, gathered in like all others, shriveled up like ears of grain.
24:25 “And even if it isn’t so now, still no one can prove me a liar and show that my words are worthless.”
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