Those Who Oppress the Poor Will Meet Judgement - Job 23-24

Job 24:4-12 (ESV)

They thrust the poor off the road;

the poor of the earth all hide themselves.

Behold, like wild donkeys in the desert

the poor go out to their toil, seeking game;

the wasteland yields food for their children.

They gather their fodder in the field,

and they glean the vineyard of the wicked man.

They lie all night naked, without clothing,

and have no covering in the cold.

They are wet with the rain of the mountains

and cling to the rock for lack of shelter.

(There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast,

and they take a pledge against the poor.)

They go about naked, without clothing;

hungry, they carry the sheaves;

among the olive rows of the wicked they make oil;

they tread the winepresses, but suffer thirst.

From out of the city the dying groan,

and the soul of the wounded cries for help;

yet God charges no one with wrong.

The above is an argument by Job as he is in a verbal battle with the very friends who came to comfort him. Instead they are accusing him of sin and saying that his affliction is  primarily due to his sin. One of the sins they have accused him of (only generally of course) is neglecting the poor.  Here is what his friend Eliphaz has accused him of:

Job 22:6-7 (ESV)

For you have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing

and stripped the naked of their clothing.

You have given no water to the weary to drink,

and you have withheld bread from the hungry.

Job is saying that he has not done this and if he did, God has not, YET, disciplined others for this, why would God single out Job? 

Job has been declared righteous by God.  He knows this but Job’s friends do not.  Job’s argument is that if he could just stand before God, God would vindicate him.  He knows God will, eventually, judge those who injury the poor (as described in the above verses) and God will tell others, this is not a sin of Jobs. 

The oppression of the poor will be judged.  No, Job did not do these things.  The accusations against him are false.  But the oppression of those vulnerable in his midst is real.  These counselors (friends) are seeing this and making a false assumption this is Job’s sin.  

Job admits in the last first of the above strain that God has not yet judge those who injure the poor.   But he will.  This we know.