Job 24:4 Commentary and Bible Study

The poor and needy are forced out of the way, because the greedy ones want to use all earth’s resources for themselves. This total absence of pity and mercy is a sure sign of a person who does not know God. Mercy is so natural to the believer that Christ makes it a defining characteristic of all his disciples (Matthew 5:7; 18:33; 23:23). Hard heartedness is incapable of seeing the need of others, incapable of realising its own vulnerability were circumstances changed a little. The wicked falsely assume that it is by their own skill and accomplishment that they are not in the position of the poor. They have not been so foolish as to let poverty overtake them. They forget the many aspects of life over which they have no control and which they take for granted, without which they would have certainly gone the same way. The result of their cruelty is that the poor of the land are forced to take refuge away from them. If the wicked see them, they will abuse them and use them for some evil purpose so that it is better to remain out of sight, even though that compounds their suffering. Some treat the subject of verses 5 and 6 as the poor; others as the wicked. Assuming the former, the poor are reduced to this desperate state: that they must scour the land in order to glean a few pickings from those corners which the rich do not consider it worth their while to trouble with. It may be the few remnants of the crop that have fallen to the ground following the great harvests of the well-to-do, or it may be that the poor go and glean in the barren areas which are regarded as useless by the wealthy. Yet for the poor this is a matter of life and death, not just for them but also for their children. If they do not gather enough, their children will starve and they will have to bear their cries and tears as they face the pains of hunger and a hopelessness future. Maybe they find something out there, but what they find is only gained by disproportionate and unnatural effort. How are they going to continue to exist on this basis, and what does life have in store for them tomorrow and the day after and the weeks to come? But the wicked are indifferent to all of this. What do they care about the suffering of others so long as they have their wheat stores full and their homes well stocked?These gather their livelihood from the field and, as well as searching the wilderness for sufficient, they are forced to glean from the fields of the wicked. Here they scarcely find enough for them and their children and always they have worry of where the next meal is going to come from. The rich were specifically commanded to not harvest every last grain from their fields but to leave sufficient for the poor so that it was not too hard for them to make a living (Leviticus 19:9-10; Deuteronomy 24:19-21), but the implication of the verse is that there was very little left behind, so hard pressed were the poor. Those who treat verse 6 as the action of the wicked, understand it to describe their disregard for law and order as they take what they want from others regardless of ownership – this being called ‘the vintage of the wicked’..