They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked.
Job 24:6 belongs to Job's defense and reply to the constant accusations, stated and implied, of his friends, and is a vindication of his own self-righteousness. It stands in the extended answer running from Job 8 to Job 27, which leads to the point where his friends cease troubling him and he gives his last reply.
The surrounding chapter describes wicked oppressors who remove landmarks and violently take away flocks and feed on them. They drive away the ass of the fatherless, take the widow's ox for a pledge, turn the needy out of the way, and reap and gather the increase for themselves. Job sets that oppressive life in contrast with his own, insisting he had not lived so. He had kept the commandment of God's lips, delivered the poor that cried and the fatherless and him that had none to help him, caused the widow's heart to sing for joy, and been eyes to the blind and feet to the lame and a father to the poor.
Unable to find God to order his cause before Him face to face, Job pleads that contrast before his friends as proof that even God would find no fault in him.
Job 24:6 belongs to Job's defense and reply to the constant accusations, stated and implied, of his friends, and is a vindication of his own self-righteousness. It stands in the extended answer running from Job 8 to Job 27, which leads to the point where his friends cease troubling him and he gives his last reply.
The surrounding chapter describes wicked oppressors who remove landmarks and violently take away flocks and feed on them. They drive away the ass of the fatherless, take the widow's ox for a pledge, turn the needy out of the way, and reap and gather the increase for themselves. Job sets that oppressive life in contrast with his own, insisting he had not lived so. He had kept the commandment of God's lips, delivered the poor that cried and the fatherless and him that had none to help him, caused the widow's heart to sing for joy, and been eyes to the blind and feet to the lame and a father to the poor.
Unable to find God to order his cause before Him face to face, Job pleads that contrast before his friends as proof that even God would find no fault in him.