Job 24

⁷Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.

¹⁷I said in my heart, “God will judge the righteous and the wicked, since there is a time for every activity and every deed.”

⁷And by that same word, the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

⁸Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

⁶For there is a right time and procedure to every purpose, though a man’s misery weighs heavily upon him.

⁷Since no one knows what will happen, who can tell him what is to come?

¹⁰Extend Your loving devotion to those who know You, and Your righteousness to the upright in heart.

³⁸For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.

¹⁴You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, which was set up by your ancestors to mark the inheritance you shall receive in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

¹⁷‘Cursed is he who moves his neighbor’s boundary stone.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’

¹⁰Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless,

²⁸Do not move an ancient boundary stone which your fathers have placed.

¹⁰The princes of Judah are like those who move boundary stones; I will pour out My fury upon them like water.

⁵The hungry consume his harvest, taking it even from the thorns, and the thirsty pant after his wealth.

⁶Do not take a pair of millstones or even an upper millstone as security for a debt, because that would be taking one’s livelihood as security.

⁶For you needlessly demanded security from your brothers and deprived the naked of their clothing.

⁷You gave no water to the weary and withheld food from the famished,

¹⁶If I have denied the desires of the poor or allowed the widow’s eyes to fail,

¹⁷if I have eaten my morsel alone, not sharing it with the fatherless—

¹⁷Do not deny justice to the foreigner or the fatherless, and do not take a widow’s cloak as security.

¹⁸Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from that place. Therefore I am commanding you to do this.

¹⁰When you lend anything to your neighbor, do not enter his house to collect security.

¹¹You are to stand outside while the man to whom you are lending brings the security out to you.

³Here I am. Bear witness against me before the Lord and before His anointed: Whose ox or donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated or oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe and closed my eyes? Tell me, and I will restore it to you.”

²⁸When the wicked come to power, people hide themselves; but when they perish, the righteous flourish.

¹⁴When daylight is gone, the murderer rises to kill the poor and needy; in the night he is like a thief.

²⁹The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy and have exploited the foreign resident without justice.

⁷They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the earth; they push the needy out of their way. A man and his father have relations with the same girl and so profane My holy name.

⁴Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

⁵You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter.

¹For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. Blessed is the one who cares for the poor; the Lord will deliver him in the day of trouble.

¹Woe to those who devise iniquity and plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands.

²³Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until evening.

⁵The hungry consume his harvest, taking it even from the thorns, and the thirsty pant after his wealth.

⁵Who set the wild donkey free? Who released the swift donkey from the harness?

⁶I made the wilderness his home and the salt flats his dwelling.

¹²When daylight came, the Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul.

⁶For they prepare their heart like an oven while they lie in wait; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

¹⁵You will sow but not reap; you will press olives but not anoint yourselves with oil; you will tread grapes but not drink the wine.

³Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and other people of the east would come up and invade them,

⁴encamping against them as far as Gaza and destroying the produce of the land. They left Israel with no sustenance, neither sheep nor oxen nor donkeys.

³³A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed.

⁵¹They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain or new wine or oil, no calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks, until they have caused you to perish.

²⁶If you take your neighbor’s cloak as collateral, return it to him by sunset,

²⁷because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? And if he cries out to Me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

⁶For you needlessly demanded security from your brothers and deprived the naked of their clothing.

¹¹You are to stand outside while the man to whom you are lending brings the security out to you.

¹²If he is a poor man, you must not go to sleep with the security in your possession;

¹⁰Without clothing, they wander about naked. They carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.

²¹When it snows, she has no fear for her household, for they are all clothed in scarlet.

⁴⁰As it was, the heat consumed me by day and the frost by night, and sleep fled from my eyes.

⁵Those who once ate delicacies are destitute in the streets; those brought up in crimson huddle in ash heaps.

³⁸The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and hid in caves and holes in the ground.

²I sleep, but my heart is awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.”

⁵We and our children are just like our countrymen and their children, yet we are subjecting our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters are already enslaved, but we are powerless to redeem them because our fields and vineyards belong to others.”

¹Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord. And now his creditor is coming to take my two children as his slaves!”

⁷They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the earth; they push the needy out of their way. A man and his father have relations with the same girl and so profane My holy name.

⁸They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge. And in the house of their God, they drink wine obtained through fines.

¹⁹If you are harvesting in your field and forget a sheaf there, do not go back to get it. It is to be left for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

¹¹Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact from him a tax of grain, you will never live in the stone houses you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted.

¹²For I know that your transgressions are many and your sins are numerous. You oppress the righteous by taking bribes; you deprive the poor of justice in the gate.

¹³“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,

⁴Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

⁴Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.

¹Again I looked, and I considered all the oppression taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; the power lay in the hands of their oppressors, and there was no comforter.

²¹You have done these things, and I kept silent; you thought I was just like you. But now I rebuke you and accuse you to your face.

⁴Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?

⁵But because of your hard and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

¹¹When the sentence for a crime is not speedily executed, the hearts of men become fully set on doing evil.

¹²Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and still lives long, yet I also know that it will go well with those who fear God, who are reverent in His presence.

¹⁷You have wearied the Lord with your words; yet you ask, “How have we wearied Him?” By saying, “All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and in them He delights,” or, “Where is the God of justice?”

¹⁵So now we call the arrogant blessed. Not only do evildoers prosper, they even test God and escape.’”

¹⁹And this is the verdict: The Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the Light because their deeds were evil.

²⁰Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

¹⁹But the way of the wicked is like the darkest gloom; they do not know what makes them stumble.

⁶And the angels who did not stay within their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling—these He has kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great day.

¹⁰and with every wicked deception directed against those who are perishing, because they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them.

¹¹For this reason God will send them a powerful delusion so that they believe the lie,

¹⁹They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But their departure made it clear that none of them belonged to us.

³⁹Then Jesus declared, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind.”

⁴⁰Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this, and they asked Him, “Are we blind too?”

²For you are fully aware that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

¹Woe to those who devise iniquity and plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands.

²They covet fields and seize them; they take away houses. They deprive a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance.

³Remember, then, what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know the hour when I will come upon you.

⁸He lies in wait near the villages; in ambush he slays the innocent; his eyes watch in stealth for the helpless.

⁹He lies in wait like a lion in a thicket; he lurks to seize the oppressed; he catches the lowly in his net.

⁷Therefore do not be partakers with them.

⁸For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light,

³⁹But understand this: If the homeowner had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.

¹¹He says to himself, “God has forgotten; He hides His face and never sees.”

⁹at twilight, as the day was fading into the dark of the night.

¹⁰Then a woman came out to meet him, with the attire of a harlot and cunning of heart.

¹²“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? For they are saying, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’”

⁹He replied, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of bloodshed, and the city is full of perversity. For they say, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land; the Lord does not see.’

³²He who commits adultery lacks judgment; whoever does so destroys himself.

³³Wounds and dishonor will befall him, and his reproach will never be wiped away.

⁷They say, “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed.”

²⁰Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

¹¹Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.

¹²For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.

¹²And at dusk the prince among them will lift his bags to his shoulder and go out. They will dig through the wall to bring him out. He will cover his face so he cannot see the land.

¹⁹Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

⁵As they watch, dig through the wall and carry your belongings out through it.

⁶And as they watch, lift your bags to your shoulder and take them out at dusk; cover your face so that you cannot see the land. For I have made you a sign to the house of Israel.”

⁴³But understand this: If the homeowner had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.

⁵May darkness and gloom reclaim it, and a cloud settle over it; may the blackness of the day overwhelm it.

²⁶As the thief is ashamed when he is caught, so the house of Israel is disgraced. They, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets

¹⁰For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive his due for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.

¹¹Therefore, since we know what it means to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is clear to God, and I hope it is clear to your conscience as well.

¹⁶And they said to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.

¹⁷For the great day of Their wrath has come, and who is able to withstand it?”

¹⁸Surely You set them on slick ground; You cast them down into ruin.

¹⁹How suddenly they are laid waste, completely swept away by terrors!

¹⁶You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

¹⁷Your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed.

²If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to honor My name,” says the Lord of Hosts, “I will send a curse among you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already begun to curse them, because you are not taking it to heart.

¹⁰Cultivate your land like the Nile, O Daughter of Tarshish; there is no longer a harbor.

¹⁸Surely You set them on slick ground; You cast them down into ruin.

¹⁹How suddenly they are laid waste, completely swept away by terrors!

²²May their table become a snare; may it be a retribution and a trap.

²⁶They sweep by like boats of papyrus, like an eagle swooping down on its prey.

¹⁴Like sheep they are destined for Sheol. Death will be their shepherd. The upright will rule them in the morning, and their form will decay in Sheol, far from their lofty abode.

³²The wicked man is thrown down by his own sin, but the righteous man has a refuge even in death.

²²One day the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. And the rich man also died and was buried.

¹³They spend their days in prosperity and go down to Sheol in peace.

²As smoke is blown away, You will drive them out; as wax melts before the fire, the wicked will perish in the presence of God.

⁴There is hope, however, for anyone who is among the living; for even a live dog is better than a dead lion.

⁵For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, because the memory of them is forgotten.

⁷The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.

¹⁴He called out in a loud voice: ‘Cut down the tree and chop off its branches; strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts flee from under it, and the birds from its branches.

¹⁶The roots beneath him dry up, and the branches above him wither away.

¹⁷The memory of him perishes from the earth, and he has no name in the land.

¹⁰Then too, I saw the burial of the wicked who used to go in and out of the holy place, and they were praised in the city where they had done so. This too is futile.

¹⁰The axe lies ready at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹⁴The dead will not live; the departed spirits will not rise. Therefore You have punished and destroyed them; You have wiped out all memory of them.

¹³The dying man blessed me, and I made the widow’s heart sing for joy.

⁶Because the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb, her rival would provoke her viciously to taunt her.

⁷And this went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival taunted her until she wept and would not eat.

⁹You sent widows away empty-handed, and the strength of the fatherless was crushed.

¹⁶If I have denied the desires of the poor or allowed the widow’s eyes to fail,

¹⁷if I have eaten my morsel alone, not sharing it with the fatherless—

³They drive away the donkey of the fatherless and take the widow’s ox in pledge.

⁴Thus the administrators and satraps sought a charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom, but they could find no charge or corruption, because he was trustworthy, and no negligence or corruption was found in him.

⁵Finally these men said, “We will never find any charge against this Daniel unless we find something against him concerning the law of his God.”

¹²From then on, Pilate tried to release Him, but the Jews kept shouting, “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who declares himself a king is defying Caesar.”

¹³When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat on the judgment seat at a place called the Stone Pavement, which in Hebrew is Gabbatha.

¹³And I saw three unclean spirits that looked like frogs coming out of the mouths of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet.

¹⁴These are demonic spirits that perform signs and go out to all the kings of the earth, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.

⁸Then Haman informed King Xerxes, “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples of every province of your kingdom. Their laws are different from everyone else’s, and they do not obey the king’s laws. So it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them.

⁹If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will deposit ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasury to pay those who carry it out.”

²The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and those who dwell on the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her immorality.”

³The eyes of the Lord are in every place, observing the evil and the good.

²³Then I will strike her children dead, and all the churches will know that I am the One who searches minds and hearts, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

³While people are saying, “Peace and security,” destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

³For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

⁴They have no struggle in their death; their bodies are well-fed.

⁷The Lord has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget any of their deeds.

⁸“Are not all my commanders kings?” he says.

⁹“Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?

¹⁰Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found.

¹¹For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its flower falls and its beauty is lost. So too, the rich man will fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

⁷that though the wicked sprout like grass, and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed.

¹Come now, you who are rich, weep and wail over the misery to come upon you.

²Your riches have rotted and moths have eaten your clothes.

³⁵I have seen a wicked, ruthless man flourishing like a well-rooted native tree,

³⁶yet he passed away and was no more; though I searched, he could not be found.

¹⁹How suddenly they are laid waste, completely swept away by terrors!

²⁴The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He blindfolds its judges. If it is not He, then who is it?

²“Should this stream of words go unanswered and such a speaker be vindicated?

³Should your babbling put others to silence? Will you scoff without rebuke?

²⁸But now, please look at me. Would I lie to your face?

⁴my lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will not utter deceit.

²“Does a wise man answer with empty counsel or fill his belly with the hot east wind?