24 “Why are times not kept by Shaddai?
Why do those who know him not see his days?
² There are those who move boundary markers;
they carry off flocks and pasture them;
³ they drive away the orphan’s donkey;
as collateral, they seize the widow’s ox.
⁴ They push the needy out of the way —
the poor of the land are forced into hiding;
⁵ like wild donkeys in the wilderness,
they have to go out and scavenge food,
[hoping that] the desert
will provide food for their children.
⁶ They must reap in fields that are not their own
and gather late grapes in the vineyards of the wicked.
⁷ They pass the night without clothing, naked,
uncovered in the cold,
⁸ wet with mountain rain,
and hugging the rock for lack of shelter.

⁹ “There are those who pluck orphans from the breast
and [those who] take [the clothes of] the poor in pledge,
¹⁰ so that they go about stripped, unclothed;
they go hungry, as they carry sheaves [of grain];
¹¹ between these men’s rows [of olives], they make oil;
treading their winepresses, they suffer thirst.
¹² Men are groaning in the city,
the mortally wounded are crying for help,
yet God finds nothing amiss!

¹³ “There are those who rebel against the light —
they don’t know its ways or stay in its paths.
¹⁴ The murderer rises with the light
to kill the poor and needy;
while at night he is like a thief.
¹⁵ The eye of the adulterer too waits for twilight;
he thinks, ‘No eye will see me’;
but [to be sure], he covers his face.
¹⁶ When it’s dark, they break into houses;
in the daytime, they stay out of sight.
[None of them] know the light.
¹⁷ For to all of them deep darkness is like morning,
for the terrors of deep darkness are familiar to them.

¹⁸ “May they be scum on the surface of the water,
may their share of land be cursed,
may no one turn on the way of their vineyards,
¹⁹ may drought and heat steal away their snow water
and Sh’ol those who have sinned.
²⁰ May the womb forget them,
may worms find them sweet,
may they no longer be remembered —
thus may iniquity be snapped like a stick.
²¹ They devour childless women
and give no help to widows.

²² “Yet God keeps pulling the mighty along —
they get up, even when not trusting their own lives.
²³ However, even if God lets them rest in safety,
his eyes are on their ways.
²⁴ They are exalted for a little while;
and then they are gone,
brought low, gathered in like all others,
shriveled up like ears of grain.

²⁵ “And even if it isn’t so now,
still no one can prove me a liar
and show that my words are worthless.”