Job 24:2

Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(2) Some remove the landmarks.—Now follows a description of the wrong-doings of various classes of men. The removal of landmarks was expressly provided against by the Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 19:14; Deuteronomy 27:17).

And feed thereof.—Rather, probably, feed them: i.e., pasture them, the more easy to do when the landmarks are so removed.

Benson Commentary

Job 24:2. Some, &c. — In proof that wicked persons prosper, he instances in two sorts of unrighteous people, whom all the world saw thriving in their iniquity: 1st, Tyrants, and those that did wrong under pretence of law and authority; and, 2d, Robbers and plunderers, that did wrong by downright force, as the bands of the Sabeans and Chaldeans, who had lately plundered him. Remove the landmark — By which men’s lands are distinguished, and their properties secured, that so they may enlarge their own border by diminishing the estate of their neighbour — which is so great an act of injustice that it was not only very strictly forbidden by God in his law, but also declared execrable by the heathen, among some of whom it was permitted to any man to kill him that did it. Forging or destroying deeds is now a crime equivalent to this. They violently take away flocks, and feed thereof — They take away cattle by force, and use them as if they were their own. Or, they feed them; they do not hide, or kill them, but openly feed them in their pastures, without any remorse, or shame, or fear of punishment, either from God or man.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

24:1-12 Job discourses further about the prosperity of the wicked. That many live at ease who are ungodly and profane, he had showed, ch. xxi. Here he shows that many who live in open defiance of all the laws of justice, succeed in wicked practices; and we do not see them reckoned with in this world. He notices those that do wrong under pretence of law and authority; and robbers, those that do wrong by force. He says, God layeth not folly to them; that is, he does not at once send his judgments, nor make them examples, and so manifest their folly to all the world. But he that gets riches, and not by right, at his end shall be a fool, Jer 17:11.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Some remove the land-marks - Landmarks are pillars or stones set up to mark the boundaries of a farm. To remove them, by carrying them on to the land of another, was an act of dishonesty and robbery - since it was only by marks that the extent of a man's property could be known. Fences were uncommon; the art of surveying was not well understood, and deeds describing land were probably unknown also, and their whole dependence, therefore, was on the stones that were erected to mark the boundaries of a lot or farm. As it was not difficult to remove them, it became a matter of special importance to guard against it, and to make it a crime of magnitude. Accordingly, it was forbidden in the strictest manner in the law of Moses. "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's land-mark;" Deuteronomy 27:17; compare Deuteronomy 19:14; Proverbs 22:28; Proverbs 23:10.

And feed thereof - Margin, "or, them." The margin is correct. The meaning is, that they drive off the flocks of others, and "pasture" them; that is, they are at no pains to conceal what they do, but mingle them with their own herds, and feed them as if they were their own. If they drove them away to kill, and removed them wholly from view, it would be less shameful than to keep and claim them as their own, and to make the robbery so public.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2-24. Instances of the wicked doing the worst deeds with seeming impunity (Job 24:2-24).

Some—the wicked.

landmarks—boundaries between different pastures (De 19:14; Pr 22:28).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Some remove the landmarks; or, they (i.e. the wicked, of whom he here treats) touch (to wit, in an unlawful manner, and with evil design, as this word is oft used, as Genesis 26:11,29 Rth 2:9, so as to invade, or possess, or remove)

the landmarks, by which men’s lands are discerned, and their properties secured; that so they may enlarge their own border by diminishing their neighbour; which is so horrid an act of injustice, that it hath not only been severely forbidden by God, Deu 19:14 27:17 Proverbs 22:28 23:10, but also declared execrable by the heathens, among whom it was permitted to any man to kill him that did it.

Feed thereof; or, feed them. They do not hide or kill them, but openly feed them, either in their oppressed neighbour’s ground, which, by taking away the landmarks, they have made their own, or in their own pastures, without any remorse, or shame, or fear of punishment, either from God or men.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Some remove the landmarks,.... Anciently set to distinguish one man's land from another, to secure property, and preserve from encroachments; but some were so wicked as either secretly in the night to remove them, or openly to do it, having power on their side, pretending they were wrongly located; this was not only prohibited by the law of God, and pronounced an accursed thing, Deuteronomy 19:14; but was reckoned so before the law was given, being known to be such by the light of nature, as what was now, and here condemned, was before that law was in being; and so we find that this was accounted an execrable thing among the Heathens, who had a deity they called Jupiter Terminalis, who was appointed over bounds and landmarks; so Numa Pompilius appointed stones to be set as bounds to everyone's lands, and dedicated them to Jupiter Terminalis, and ordered that those that removed them should be slain as sacrilegious persons, and they and their oxen devoted to destruction (f): some render it, "they touch the landmarks" (g), as if to touch them was unlawful, and therefore much more to remove them:

they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof; not content with a sheep or a lamb, they took away whole flocks, and that by force and violence, openly and publicly, and slew them, and fed on them; or else took them and put them into their own grounds, or such as they had got by encroachments from others, where they fed them without any fear of men; which shows the effrontery and impudence of them.

(f) Dion. Halicarnass. & Festus apud Sanctium in loc. Vid. Rycquium de Capitol. Roman. c. 14. Ovid. Fasti, l. 2.((g) "attigerunt", Pagninus, Bolducius; "attingunt", Vatablus.

Geneva Study Bible

Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. Some remove] Or, there are who remove. In the absence of hedgerows or walls, the landmark defined the boundary of a man’s field or estate. Its removal was equivalent to violent appropriation of the property of another; see Deuteronomy 19:14; Hosea 5:10.

and feed thereof] Rather, and feed them. They are open and defiant in their violent wrong, they seize a flock and publicly graze it as their own.

2–4. Job now proceeds to illustrate his complaint of the absence of righteousness in God’s rule of the world. The instances are in the first place general.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - Some remove the landmarks. (On this form of wickedness, see Deuteronomy 19:14; Deuteronomy 27:17; Proverbs 22:28; Proverbs 23:10; Hosea 5:10.) Where neighbouring properties are not divided by fences of any kind, as in the East generally, the only way of distinguishing between one man's land and another's is by termini, or "landmarks," which are generally low stone metes or bourns, placed at intervals on the boundary-line. An easy form of robbery was to displace these bourns, putting them further back on one's neighbour's land. They violently take away flocks. Others openly drive off their neighbours' flocks from their pastures, mix them with their own flocks, and say that they are theirs (comp. Job 1:15-17). And feed thereof; rather, and feed them (as in the margin); i.e. pasture them. Job 24:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

1 Wherefore are not bounds reserved by the Almighty,

And they who honour Him see not His days?

2 They remove the landmarks,

They steal flocks and shepherd them.

3 They carry away the ass of the orphan,

And distrain the ox of the widow.

4 They thrust the needy out of the way,

The poor of the land are obliged to slink away together.

The supposition that the text originally stood מדּוּע לרשׁעים משּׁדּי is natural; but it is at once destroyed by the fact that Job 24:1 becomes thereby disproportionately long, and yet cannot be divided into two lines of comparatively independent contents. In fact, לרשׁעים is by no means absolutely necessary. The usage of the language assumes it, according to which את followed by the genitive signifies the point of time at which any one's fate is decided. Isaiah 13:22; Jeremiah 27:7; Ezekiel 22:3; Ezekiel 30:3; the period when reckoning is made, or even the terminus ad quem, Ecclesiastes 9:12; and ywm followed by the gen. of a man, the day of his end, Job 15:32; Job 18:20; Ezekiel 21:30, and freq.; or with יהוה, the day when God's judgment is revealed, Joel 1:15, and freq. The boldness of poetic language goes beyond this usage, by using עתּים directly of the period of punishment, as is almost universally acknowledged since Schultens' day, and ימיו dna ,y of God's days of judgment or of vengeance;

(Note: On עתים, in the sense of times of retribution, Wetzstein compares the Arab. ‛idât, which signifies predetermined reward or punishment; moreover, עת is derived from עדת (from ועד), and עתּים is equivalent to עדתּים, according to the same law of assimilation, by which now-a-days they say לתּי instead of לדתּי (one who is born on the same day with me, from Arab. lidat, lida), and רתּי instead of רדתּי (my drinking-time), since the assimilation of the ד takes place everywhere where ת is pronounced. The ת of the feminine termination in עתים, as in שׁקתות and the like, perhaps also in בתים (bâttim), is amalgamated with the root.)

and it is the less ambiguous, since צפן, in the sense of the divine predetermination of what is future, Job 15:20, especially of God's storing up merited punishment, Job 21:19, is an acknowledged word of our poet. On מן with the passive, vid., Ew. 295, c (where, however, Job 28:4 is erroneously cited in its favour); it is never more than equivalent to ἀπό, for to use מן directly as ὑπό with the passive is admissible neither in Hebrew nor in Arabic. ידעו (Keri ידעיו, for which the Targ. unsuitably reads ידעי) are, as in Psalm 36:11; Psalm 87:4, comp. supra, Job 18:21, those who know God, not merely superficially, but from experience of His ways, consequently those who are in fellowship with Him. לא חזוּ is to be written with Zinnorith over the לא, and Mercha by the first syllable of חזו. The Zinnorith necessitates the retreat of the tone of חזו to its first syllable, as in כי־חרה, Psalm 18:8 (Br's Pslaterium, p. xiii.); for if חזו remained Milra, לא ought to be connected with it by Makkeph, and consequently remain toneless (Psalter, ii.507).

Next follows the description of the moral, abhorrence which, while the friends (Job 22:19) maintain a divine retribution everywhere manifest, is painfully conscious of the absence of any determination of the periods and days of judicial punishment. Fearlessly and unpunished, the oppression of the helpless and defenceless, though deserving of a curse, rages in every form. They remove the landmarks; comp. Deuteronomy 27:17, "Cursed is he who removeth his neighbour's landmark" (מסּיג, here once written with שׂ, while otherwise השּׂיג from נשׂג signifies assequi, on the other hand הסּיג from סוּג signifies dimovere). They steal flocks, ויּרעוּ, i.e., they are so barefaced, that after they have stolen them they pasture them openly. The ass of the orphans, the one that is their whole possession, and their only beast for labour, they carry away as prey (נהג, as e.g., Isaiah 20:4); they distrain, i.e., take away with them as a pledge (on חבל, to bind by a pledge, obstringere, and also to take as a pledge, vid., on Job 22:6, and Khler on Zechariah 11:7), the yoke-ox of the widow (this is the exact meaning of שׁור, as of the Arab. thôr). They turn the needy aside from the way which they are going, so that they are obliged to wander hither and thither without home or right: the poor of the land are obliged to hide themselves altogether. The Hiph. הטּה, with אביונים as its obj., is used as in Amos 5:12; there it is used of turning away from a right that belongs to them, here of turning out of the way into trackless regions. אביון (vid., on Job 29:16) here, as frequently, is the parallel word with ענו, the humble one, the patient sufferer; instead of which the Keri is עני, the humbled, bowed down with suffering (vid., on Psalm 9:13). ענוי־ארץ without any Keri in Psalm 76:10; Zephaniah 2:3, and might less suitably appear here, where it is not so much the moral attribute as the outward condition that is intended to be described. The Pual חכּאוּ describes that which they are forced to do.

The description of these unfortunate ones is now continued; and by a comparison with Job 30:1-8, it is probable that aborigines who are turned out of their original possessions and dwellings are intended (comp. Job 15:19, according to which the poet takes his stand in an age in which the original relations of the races had been already disturbed by the calamities of war and the incursions of aliens). If the central point of the narrative lies in Haurn, or, more exactly, in the Nukra, it is natural, with Wetzstein, to think of the Arab. 'hl 'l-wukr or ‛rb 'l-ḥujr, i.e., the (perhaps Ituraean) "races of the caves" in Trachonitis.