to dock off · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
corn
בְּלִיל֣וֹbe.li.Lo
H1098
mixed · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
field
בַּ֭שָּׂדֶהBa.sa.deh
H7704
a field (as flat) · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
gather
יְלַקֵּֽשׁוּye.la.Ke.shu
H3953
to gather the after crop · verb, piel imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
vintage
וְכֶ֖רֶםve.Khe.rem
H3754
a garden or vineyard · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct
wicked
רָשָׁ֣עra.Sha'
H7563
morally wrong · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Micah 6:15 Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but shalt not…
Deuteronomy 28:33 The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway…
Deuteronomy 28:51 And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, w…
Judges 6:3-6 And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up agains…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 24:1-12
Job's friends had been very positive in it that they should soon see the fall of wicked people, how much soever they might prosper for a while. By no means, says Job; though times are not hidden from the Almighty, yet those that know him do not presently see his day, Job 24:1. 1. He takes it for granted that times are not hidden from the Almighty; past times are not hidden from his judgment (Ecc 3:15), present times are not hidden from his providence (Mat 10:29), future times are not hidden from his prescience, Act 15:18. God governs the world, and therefore we may be sure he takes cognizance of it. Bad times are not hidden from him, though the bad men that make the times bad say one to anot…
Like the wild asses (Job 24:5) they (these Bedouin robbers) reap (metaphorically) their various grain (so the Hebrew for "corn" means). The wild ass does not let man pile his mixed provender up in a stable (Isa 30:24); so these robbers find their food in the open air, at one time in the desert (Job 24:5), at another in the fields.
the vintage of the wicked--Hebrew, "the wicked gather the vintage"; the vintage of robbery, not of honest industry. If we translate "belonging to the wicked," then it will imply that the wicked alone have vineyards, the "pious poor" (Job 24:4) have none. "Gather" in Hebrew, is "gather late." As the first clause refers to the early harvest of corn, so the second t…
They reap everyone his corn in the field,.... Not the poor, who are obliged to reap the corn of the wicked for them without any wages, as some; but rather the wicked reap the corn of the poor; they are so insolent and impudent, that they do not take the corn out of their barns by stealth, but while it is standing in the field; they come openly and reap it down, as if it was their own, without any fear of God or men: it is observed, that the word (k) signifies a mixture of the poorer sorts of corn, which is scarce anything better than food for cattle; yet this they cut down and carry off, as forage for their horses and asses at least. Some of the ancient versions, taking it to be two words, r…
The Church Fathers
"They have prematurely harvested the field which is not theirs. Or he designates that kind of persecution which threatens the confiscation of property; or by this field we must understand the Church, that the persecution wants to harvest before time, that is to say before the tares grew to be separated at the time of the harvest (1).
"They reap in a field not their own" … as wild asses tread underfoot the fields of others and browse on their grass, so the impious, with their impudent violence, reap in fields that are not theirs and steal them from their owners. "They glean in the vineyard of the wicked." This means it is not enough for the wicked to steal from the poor, who have worked without a wage in the fields from the beginning to the end, [but also from the rich].
They reap a field not their own, and the vineyard of him whom they have oppressed by violence they gather. By the name of a 'field' may be denoted the wide compass of Holy Scripture, and Heretics 'reap' it not being their own, in that they carry away from it sentences which are infinitely removed from their own notions; which same is furthermore described by the title of a 'vineyard,' in that through the sentences of truth it puts forth the clusters of the virtues; the owner of which vineyard, i.e. the originator of Holy Scripture, they as it were 'oppress with violence,' because they endeavour violently to twist and turn a sense of His upon the words of Holy Writ; as He saith, But thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins, thou hast given Me labour in thine iniquity. And they 'reap the vintage of that vineyard,' in that they heap together therefrom clusters of sentences after the bent of their own understanding. It may be that by the title of a 'field' or of a 'vineyard' the Church Universal is set forth, which corrupt preachers 'reap,' and by oppressing in His members the Author of it, 'gather the vintage,' in that in bearing down upon the grace of our Creator, whilst they seize off therefrom persons who seemed to be righteous, what else is this but that they carry off 'ears' or 'clusters' of souls?
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Agriculture — Tilling the ground (Gen. 2:15; 4:2, 3, 12) and rearing cattle were the chief employments in ancient times. The Egyptians excelled in agriculture. And after the Israelites entered into the possession…
Dredge — (Job 24:6). See CORN.
Fodder — Heb. belil, (Job 6:5), meaning properly a mixture or medley (Lat. farrago), “made up of various kinds of grain, as wheat, barley, vetches, and the like, all mixed together, and then sown or given to…
Creditors · Often cruel in exacting debts — Often cruel in exacting debts
Dishonesty · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Harvest · FIGURATIVE — FIGURATIVE
Homicide · 24:22; — 24:22;
Poor, The · The wicked: Oppress — The wicked: Oppress
Reaping · Is the cutting of the corn in harvest — Is the cutting of the corn in harvest
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Job 24:6 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
5 Behold, as wild asses in the desert,
They go forth in their work seeking for prey,
The steppe is food to them for the children.
6 In the field they reap the fodder for his cattle,
And they glean the vineyard of the evil-doer.
7 They pass the night in nakedness without a garment,
And have no covering in the cold.
8 They are wet with the torrents of rain upon the mountains,
And they hug the rocks for want of shelter.
The poet could only draw such a picture as this, after having himself seen the home of his hero, and the calamitous fate of such as were driven forth from their original abodes to live a vagrant, poverty-stricken gipsy life. By Job 24:5, one is reminded of Psa 104:21-23, especia…
glean in the vineyards of the wicked: Job was depicting the desperate condition of the poor. If their fields had been stolen like Naboth’s vineyard (24:2; see 1 Kgs 21:1-29), the poor would harvest for the thieving owners what should have been their own crops; instead of owning the whole crop, they would get just the leftover pickings for themselves. Perhaps the point is that the poor were forced to glean from the fields of wicked people who left no gleanings (Lev 19:10; 23:22), instead of being able to glean from the righteous, who leave something for the poor (Lev 19:9-10; 23:22; Ruth 2:1-23).
Rashi on Job 24:6
In the field of others.
his produce Heb. בְּלִילוֹ [like] יְבוּלוּ, his produce.
they reap to steal it.
and the wicked gather the plants of the vineyard Heb. יְלַקֵּשׁוּ. And [from] the vineyards of others these wicked men take their fruit; espreinment in Old French. They take their לֶקֶש. לֶקֶש is an expression of a growth of produce, as in (Amos 7:1), at the beginning of the shooting up of the grain, which Jonathan renders. צִמוּחַ, growing. And so did Rabbi Eleazar [Hakalir] establish (in the Hoshanah “Soil from curse”): produce לֶקֶש) from locusts. (Another interpretation: and they delay the vineyard of the wicked. They delay it from destruction, because they eat up [the vineyards] of…
