“When a crime is not punished quickly, people feel it is safe to do wrong” (Eccl 8:11, NLT). Job agrees.
Since the days of Job, times have obviously changed. Traditions have changed. Travel has changed. Technology certainly has changed. But the human condition? Not so much. There are still the haves and the have-nots, still those who love things and use people rather than loving people and using things. The dominant philosophy of life seems to be, Do what you have to do to get ahead…or to get by…or to get away with it. The details of the crimes have changed, but at the heart they are the same. Job emphasizes more the grief caused by these sins rather than the guilt of them. Some would encroach on a neighbor’s land by moving the boundary marker (Job 24:2), something strictly forbidden, especially because it is “the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess” (Deut 19:14). It may seem unimportant to us, but it was directly stealing from God. And when we read of the rich stealing lambs from the poor, we can’t help but think about the story that Nathan told David (2 Sam 12:1- 10). “They seize flocks violently and feed on them” (Job 24:2). Job focuses on the ill treatment of “the fatherless…the widow…the needy…the poor” (vv 3-4). Who but the heartless would think of taking “the widow’s ox as a pledge” so she had nothing to work with, or taking someone’s clothing, so they had “no covering in the cold” (vv 3, 7)! No wonder these cruelties had to be forbidden by the law. Job pictures the “murderer,” the “thief,” and “the adulterer” (vv 14- 15), and describes violence both in the countryside and the city. The evil work under cover of darkness, and even use disguises (vv 15-17). But the most frightening fact, according to Job? Here it is: “Yet God does not charge them with wrong” (v 12). Hmmm. Why is that?