Job 24:4

They turn the needy out of the way: the poor of the earth hide themselves together.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

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

They turn the needy out of the way - They crowd the poor out of the path, and thus oppress and injure them. They do not allow them the advantages of the highway.

The poor of the earth hide themselves together - For fear of the rich and mighty man. Driven from the society of the rich, without their patronage and friendship, they are obliged to associate together, and find in the wicked man neither protector nor friend. And yet the proud oppressor is not punished.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

4. Literally, they push the poor out of their road in meeting them. Figuratively, they take advantage of them by force and injustice (alluding to the charge of Eliphaz, Job 22:8; 1Sa 8:3).

poor—in spirit and in circumstances (Mt 5:3).

hide—from the injustice of their oppressors, who have robbed them of their all and driven them into unfrequented places (Job 20:19; 30:3-6; Pr 28:28).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Out of the way; either,

1. Out of the way of piety and justice. They engage them to take evil courses by their examples, or promises, or threatenings. Or,

2. Out of their right. Or,

3. Out of their course and way of living. Or rather, (as the word properly signifies, and as the next clause explains it,) out of the high-way; out of the path or place in which these wicked oppressors walk and range. They labour to keep out of their way and sight for fear of their further injuries and oppressions.

Hide themselves, for fear of these wicked tyrants and persecutors.

Together, for their mutual comfort and defence against those who should invade or disturb them there. Or, alike. Though some of the poor are more nearly related, or have been more serviceable to these oppressors, yet none of them can escape their rage and violence.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

They turn the needy out of the way,.... Either, in a moral sense, out of the right way, the way of righteousness and truth, by their bad examples, or by their threatenings or flatteries; or, in a civil sense, out of the way of their livelihood, by taking that from them by which they got it; or, in a literal sense, obliging them to turn out of the way from them, in a supercilious and haughty manner, or causing them, through fear of them, to get out of the way, that they might not meet them, lest they should insult them, beat and abuse them, or take that little from them they had, as follows:

the poor of the earth hide themselves together; who are not only poor in purse, but poor in spirit, meek, humble, and lowly, and have not spirit and courage to stand against such oppressors, but are easily crushed by them; these through fear of them hide themselves in holes and corners in a body, in a large company together, lest they should fall into their cruel hands, and be used by them in a barbarous manner, see Proverbs 28:28.

Geneva Study Bible

They turn the needy out of the way: the poor of the earth hide themselves {c} together.

(c) And for cruelty and oppression dare not show their faces.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

4. “Turning the needy out of the way” is a general expression for doing them wrong, hindering them of their just rights; comp. Amos 5:12. The last clause “the poor hide themselves together” seems to sum up the general effect of the preceding wrongs. The poor, violently dispossessed of what belonged to them, or stripped through forms of law little different from violence (“for a pledge,” Job 24:3), and deprived of their fields, are forced to hide themselves away from men, among whom they had formerly lived in respect, and huddle together in obscure haunts.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 4. - They turn the needy out of the way. Either "they force poor men to turn out of the road when they are using it, and wait till they have passed" (compare the recent practice of the Japanese daimios), or "they make the highways so dangerous with their violence that they compel the poor and needy to seek byways for safety" (Judges 5:6). The second hemistich favours the latter interpretation. The poor of the earth (or, the meek of the earth) hide themselves together. In the East there have always been superior and subject races, as well as proud nobles and down-trodden men of the same race. It is not clear of which of these two Job speaks. The former were often hunted out of all the desirable lands, and forced to fly to rooks and caves and holes in the ground, whence they were known as "Troglodytes." The latter, less frequently, handed together, and withdrew to remote and sequestered spots, where they might hope to live unmolested by their oppressors (Hebrews 11:38). Job 24:4

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.