For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Job 24:1-12

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 labour 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.

A. Find Out

1. What does Job now ask about God? v.1
2. What examples of obvious sin does he cite? v.2-4
3. What first way does it leave the poor struggling? v.5,6
4. How does it also leave them vulnerable? v.7,8
5. What further illustrations are given? v.9-12a
6. What is Job’s complaint against God? v.12b

B. Think:

1. What sort of world is Job portraying here?
2. What does he wonder about the Lord?

C. Comment:

Again and again in these chapters this same apparent mystery is confronted: why does God not act against evil?  Why doesn’t God step up and judge evildoers even as they do evil? (v.1) Job sees men sinning against other men: they move boundaries and steal land and flocks (v.2), they oppress and steal from the weak (v.3,4). The result of this is that the poor are left struggling to survive. They struggle to get food (v.5,6), they struggle for shelter (v.7,8), orphans are snatched (v.9), and are utterly destitute (v.10,11) and the sounds of death are constantly heard (v.12a) but God apparently seems to do nothing! (v.12b) Why?

Such are the cries of any thinking person. They are legitimate cries. It is all right to ask such questions. The frustrating thing is that answers are not given here. The truth is that we live in a world that God has made, and He’s made human being to have free will to choose how we live. So often we choose to live badly. If God immediately put out a warning hand to stop us acting in such ways it would no longer be free will. Does God judge wrong doers? In that He makes things so that our wrong bounce back on us or we live with the fruits of them, yes. Sometimes He steps in and removes a wrong doer for the general good, but often He waits until after death for there to be an accounting, and that so often leaves us complaining about the less than godly and less than righteous lives we see around us. And we forget our own sin too.

D. Application:

1. Sin does bring its own ‘fruit’, so beware.
2. God WILL judge – sometime!

Passage:  Job 24:13-18

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.

A. Find Out

1. Who does Job now speak about? How are they described? v.13
2. Who is the first example of this that he gives? v.14
3. Who else uses darkness to commit sin? v.15
4. Who else makes use of it? v.16
5. How is darkness to them? v.17
6. Yet what is their destiny? v.18

B. Think:

1. What is the significance of darkness in these verses?
2. How does this passage flow on from the previous one?
3. Yet how does it progress and conclude?

C. Comment:

Job has just been considering the injustices of this world (v.2-12) and wondered why God doesn’t act. Now he focuses his thinking on those who seem to get away with sin under the cover of darkness. He starts with the moral contrast of light and darkness and speaks of those who reject the light (v.13), but although we use light and darkness to contrast good and evil, Job now shows how literal darkness aids and abets or, perhaps, enables men to do the sinful acts that start in their hearts.

There is the murderer (v.14) who plots murder but waits until the daylight has gone so that he may carry out his evil deed unseen by the world around. Similarly, there is the adulterer (v.15) who plans a wrong liaison but waits until dark, for the same reason. Likewise, the burglar (v.16) operates in the dark for the same reason. For each of them the arrival of darkness is like the start of a working day (v.17); it is the time when they move into action to perform their sinful acts and they share in the deeds that cause terror to others.

Yes, these are some of the sinners who appear to get away with it. But Job doesn’t finish there. These men are like the foam that you sometimes see on the surface of rivers that will soon be blown away (v.18), their lives are cursed and will soon be gone. That is what Job is going to move on to. They appear to get away with it, but death is just waiting for them and then will come an accounting!

D. Application:

1. Yes, men do appear to be able to hide their sins – but not for long!
2. There will come a time of accounting to God.

Passage: Job 24:19-25

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 ears of corn.

25 ‘If this is not so, who can prove me false
    and reduce my words to nothing?’

A. Find Out

1. What happens to these sinners? v.19,20
2. What have they been seen to do? v.21
3. But what happens to them? v.22
4. How may they be deceived? v.23,24a
5. But what is their end? v.24
6. What does he then ask his friends? v.25

B. Think:

1. What point does Job make about these sinners?
2. How may that appear not so sometimes?
3. Yet what is the guaranteed end?

C. Comment:

Job has spoken about social injustice and then the nature of sinners who carry out their blatant sins out of the public eye so that they think they get away with it. But, he now continues, they will get their comeuppance (v.19) for death will eventually get them.

In these verses Job doesn’t so much warn that they will be judged prematurely as point out the fact that one day they will eventually die and then have to face God (implied). Whatever they do now, one day death will come and their evil deeds will soon be forgotten (v.20).

In the present they may prey on those weaker than them (v.21) but one day God is going to deal with them (v.22). He may leave them for a while so they seem established (v.22b) but that is only a temporary thing. They may feel secure (v.23) but the Lord is watching them and planning for a time of accountability (implied).  For a while these evildoers may appear to be exalted, well off and doing well (v.24a) but that is a temporary thing for like everyone else their lives are limited and there will be a time of facing the Lord (v.24 implied).

Come on, says Job, isn’t what I am saying right? (v.25). In all of this Job has worked through from a place of questioning to a place of answers. Yes, there is wickedness but it is only temporary and evildoers will answer to God! He has thought it through and come to a right answer.

D. Application:

1. Do we bother to think through our questions?
2. Do we ask the Lord for help with our questions?