1 “Why are times not kept byShaddai?
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.”