Biblion Bible Commentary
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Job: Why Are Times Not Laid Up?
Job 24:1-25
1 “Why aren’t times laid up by the Almighty? Why don’t those who know him see his days? · WEB
Job turns from his own case to the poor of the world, and asks why there is no day set for the crimes that everyone can see.
The question that opens the chapter is about the calendar. Why aren't times laid up by the Almighty? Why don't those who know him see his days? Job 24:1.
He is asking why there are no assize days — no fixed sessions at which accounts are settled. It is the sharpest form of his complaint, and it has stopped being about him.
What follows is the longest passage in the book about other people's suffering, and it is remarkable that it comes from a man in his condition. Job has spent twenty chapters on his own case. Here he stops, and looks around.
The crimes are property crimes against those with no protection. Landmarks removed, flocks taken by force, the donkey of the fatherless driven off, the widow's ox taken as security Job 24:2–3.
And then the victims, described with an attention nobody else in the book gives them. They forage in the wilderness like wild donkeys Job 24:5. They lie all night naked without clothing, and have no covering in the cold, wet with mountain rain, embrace the rock for lack of a shelter Job 24:7–8.
The two verses that follow are the most economical description of exploitation in Scripture. They carry the sheaves while hungry; they tread wine presses, and suffer thirst Job 24:10–11. Men who handle food all day and are not fed by it. The work is done inside the walls of the men who own them.
Then the summary, and it is an accusation: from out of the populous city, men groan. The soul of the wounded cries out, yet God doesn't regard the folly Job 24:12.
Job is not saying that God cannot see. He is saying that nothing is being done, which is a different and harder charge, and he brings it on behalf of people who are not him.
The second half turns to those who work in the dark — the murderer who rises with the light and kills the poor, the adulterer waiting for twilight and saying no eye will see me, the housebreaker who digs through walls at night Job 24:14–16. For all of them the morning is to all of them like thick darkness Job 24:17: exposure is what they fear, so the daylight is their terror.
The closing verses concede that such men do finally die and are forgotten Job 24:20 Job 24:24, which is what the friends have been insisting. Job's point is about the interval. God gives them security, and they rest in it Job 24:23 — for a lifetime, and the widow and the orphan they stripped do not live to see the end of it.
And he closes with a challenge nobody takes up: if it isn't so now, who will prove me a liar? Job 24:25. Bildad's answer is six verses long, and Zophar has none.
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