Job 24:1-25
In the Midst of Suffering
1“Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?
Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?
2 There are those who move boundary stones;
they pasture flocks they have stolen.
3 They drive away the orphan’s donkey
and take the widow’s ox in pledge.
4 They thrust the needy from the path
and force all the poor of the land into hiding.
5 Like wild donkeys in the desert,
the poor go about their labor of foraging food;
the wasteland provides food for their children.
6 They gather fodder in the fields
and glean in the vineyards of the wicked.
7 Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked;
they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold.
8 They are drenched by mountain rains
and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.
9 The fatherless child is snatched from the breast;
the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.
10 Lacking clothes, they go about naked;
they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.
11 They crush olives among the terraces;
they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
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.
13 “There are those who rebel against the light,
who do not know its ways
or stay in its paths.
14 When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up,
kills the poor and needy,
and in the night steals forth like a thief.
15 The eye of the adulterer watches for dusk;
he thinks, ‘No eye will see me,’
and he keeps his face concealed.
16 In the dark, thieves break into houses,
but by day they shut themselves in;
they want nothing to do with the light.
17 For all of them, midnight is their morning;
they make friends with the terrors of darkness.
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.
19 As heat and drought snatch away the melted snow,
so the grave snatches away those who have sinned.
20 The womb forgets them,
the worm feasts on them;
the wicked are no longer remembered
but are broken like a tree.
21 They prey on the barren and childless woman,
and to the widow they show no kindness.
22 But God drags away the mighty by his power;
though they become established, they have no assurance of life.
23 He may let them rest in a feeling of security,
but his eyes are on their ways.
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.
25 “If this is not so, who can prove me false
and reduce my words to nothing?”
I doubt that Job had ever questioned God like he did here when he was right in the middle of his sufferings...When we are suffering or grieving we get very much caught up in that suffering or grief...We get very much caught up in the present moment of the suffering and the grief...When we do we can lose sight of God's Plan...We want something immediate...Job cried out in anguish with questions about the unfairness in the world in the first part of these verses...The latter part of this chapter it seems that Job is agreeing with his friends that God is punishing for a sin (maybe an unknown sin), and God rewards the righteous...Job does admit that the wicked can exalted for a little while and then will be gathered up like grain and their heads will be cut off...
Questions filled Job's mind...He may have forgotten about God's Love...In the past Job had always shunned evil and feared and respected God...His life was much easier...When our times our troubled, things get blurred, we tire...Life gets us much out of sync...Our mood can go up and down...Job is crying out to God and is looking for His Love, and His comfort -while still feeling all this pain...When we are suffering, it is sometimes hard to stay focused on God...But He is there...In the midst of great sufferings and trials, we seem instinctively to try to seek Him...We often want immediate answers from Him...His suffering has taken Job down this path of ups and downs, and all the while God is listening, hearing, and Loving him...Job would learn this later when God comes out of a storm and answers Job (Job 38:1)...