Job 24:6 · Bible study
Job 24:6 Commentary: Who Reaps and Gleans in ?
Hebrew · 10 what the commentators say
Meaning in one sentence
Commentators disagree whether the wicked or the poor are the subjects of harvesting in Job 24:6.
Research Summary
- Meaning: A scene of economic exploitation in which the poor are either robbed of their harvest or forced to scavenge animal feed from the fields of the wicked.
- Key words: בְּלִיל (fodder, mixed grain for cattle), לקשׁ (to glean, strip bare), רָשָׁע (wicked, guilty person).
- Main debate: Who are the subjects of the verbs? Either the wicked themselves (taking grain from the poor) or the destitute outcasts (foraging in the fields of the wicked).
- Theological theme: The apparent silence of God when the institutions meant to protect the poor collapse into instruments of oppression.
- Best use: A lens for lament and an invitation to cry out for God’s intervention when systems of justice fail.
Translation Comparison
BSB Berean Standard Bible 2020
They gather fodder in the fields and glean the vineyards of the wicked.
WEB World English Bible 2000
They cut their food in the field. They glean the vineyard of the wicked.
KJV King James Version 1769
They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked.
ASV American Standard Version 1901
They cut their provender in the field; And they glean the vintage of the wicked.
YLT Young's Literal Translation 1898
In a field his provender they reap, And the vineyard of the wicked they glean.
Darby Darby Bible 1890
They reap in the field the fodder thereof, and they gather the vintage of the wicked;
Douay-Rheims Douay-Rheims Bible 1899
They reap the field that is not their own, and gather the vintage of his vineyard whom by violence they have oppressed.
Translations in other languages (10 available)
En el campo siegan su pasto, y los impíos vendimian la viña ajena.
No campo colhem sua forragem, e vindimam a vinha do perverso.
Ils coupent le fourrage qui reste dans les champs,
Sie ernten auf dem Acker, was er trägt, und lesen den Weinberg des Gottlosen.
Op het veld maaien zij zijn voeder, en den wijnberg des goddelozen lezen zij af.
Raccolgono nei campi la loro pastura, raspollano nella vigna dell’empio;
Na polu ubogiego pożynają zboże, a niepobożni z winnic zbierają.
жнут они на поле не своем и собирают виноград у нечестивца;
收割 別人田間 的禾稼，摘取 惡人 餘剩的葡萄，
They get mixed grain from the field, and they take away the late fruit from the vines of those who have wealth.
Verse in Context
Original Language (Biblical Hebrew)
Old Testament · Biblical Hebrew · Job 24:6
Source: STEPBible TAGNT/TEHB (CC-BY 4.0). Click or tap a morphology code to see the full parsing.
Scholars' Consensus
Commentators agree that Job 24:6 describes a scene of desperate social injustice, but they divide sharply on who is doing the reaping and gleaning. One reading, represented by Barnes, Gill, and Matthew Henry, sees the subjects as the wicked themselves. On this view, brutal oppressors break into fields, cut down standing grain, and strip vineyards that belong to honest laborers, a picture of open plunder. Barnes notes that the Hebrew term בּליל (mixed fodder) suggests food meant for cattle, so the theft is doubly degrading: the wicked take even the animal feed. The other reading, championed by Keil & Delitzsch and the Cambridge Bible, holds that the subjects are the destitute outcasts introduced in verse 5. Forced off their land by conquerors, these displaced people scavenge fodder in fields they do not own and glean the leftover grapes from the vineyards of the wicked. Both interpretations are grammatically possible because the Hebrew verbs lack explicit subjects. The ambiguity forces the reader to sit with the raw pain of the scene, whether the wicked are thriving by theft, or the poor are reduced to surviving on scraps from the tables of their oppressors.
How settled is the interpretation?
Interpretive difficulty: High
Main views:
- Wicked as subjects: The immediate context (vv.2–4) describes the violent actions of the wicked: removing landmarks, taking flocks, plundering the poor. The verbs in vv.5–8 lack explicit subjects, so continuity argues that the same wicked are reaping and gleaning (Barnes, Gill, Matthew Henry).
- Destitute as subjects: Verse 5 introduces a new group compared to wild donkeys, searching for food in the wilderness. Verse 6 continues that description: they cut fodder and glean vineyards. The poor are the reapers, and 'the wicked' (v.6b) is the owner of the vineyard they are forced to strip (Keil & Delitzsch, Cambridge Bible).
What is clear: Both readings agree that the verse depicts a situation of profound social injustice, where the poor are either violently robbed or reduced to foraging for survival, and that this injustice is a cause for lament and a challenge to the belief that God always punishes the wicked immediately.
What Scholars Agree and Debate
| Topic | Agreed | Debated |
|---|---|---|
| Identity of the reapers | The verse describes an unjust situation where the poor are being deprived of the fruit of their labor or forced to forage in degraded conditions. | Some read the subjects as the wicked plundering the fields of the poor (Barnes, Gill, Matthew Henry). Others read them as the destitute outcasts forced to scavenge in the fields of the wicked (Keil & Delitzsch, Cambridge Bible). |
| Meaning of 'fodder' (<em>בְּלִיל</em>) | The word refers to mixed grain used as animal feed, indicating the food being taken is of low quality. | For Barnes, this underscores the wicked's greed (they steal even cattle feed). For those who see the destitute as subjects, it shows how far the poor have fallen (they are reduced to eating what animals would eat). |
| Relation to Mosaic gleaning laws | The legal provision for gleaning (Leviticus 19, Deuteronomy 24) forms the backdrop: gleaning was meant to help the poor, but here the process has been corrupted. | If the wicked are reaping, they have violated the law by taking the entire harvest. If the destitute are gleaning, they are doing what the law allowed, but in the context of oppression, they are gleaning from the wicked, not from a just landowner. |
| Role in Job's argument | Job uses this scene to challenge his friends' claim that the wicked always suffer quickly. | Some see Job's point as: the wicked are thriving by oppressing the poor, and God does not punish them immediately. Others argue Job is describing the suffering of the innocent poor, as part of his larger claim that the righteous can and do suffer unjustly. |
Historical & Cultural Context
Job 24:6 draws on two social realities of the ancient Near East: the legal practice of gleaning and the lawless violence of raiding bands. Mosaic law commanded landowners to leave the edges of their fields unharvested and not to go back for fallen grapes, so that the poor, the foreigner, the orphan and the widow could gather food (Leviticus 19:9, 10; Deuteronomy 24:19, 21). This was a system of dignified charity, the poor worked for what they got, and the landowner obeyed God by not taking everything. But Job’s world has broken down.
Verse 6 uses two key Hebrew verbs: יִקְצ֑וֹרוּ ('they harvest') and יְלַקֵּֽשׁוּ ('they glean'). The second verb, לקשׁ in the Piel stem, carries the sense of stripping completely, taking every last thing, far from the careful gleaning prescribed by law. The word for 'fodder' (בּליל) is mixed grain for livestock, not bread for humans. Whether the reapers are the wicked stripping the poor or the poor scavenging animal feed, the system that should protect the vulnerable has collapsed.
The Cambridge Bible notes that the people described here match what we know about displaced aboriginal populations east of the Jordan, whose lands were seized by stronger tribes. Keil & Delitzsch picture a vagrant, gypsy-like existence, whole families driven to live like wild asses (verse 5), foraging in open country and hugging rocks for shelter (verse 8). This is not a metaphorical scene; it is a vivid social catastrophe, one that Job uses to confront his friends’ tidy theology that always rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked.
Textual Notes
The consulted sources note no significant textual variants in the Hebrew of Job 24:6. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text agree on the wording. The ancient versions (LXX, Vulgate, Syriac, Targum) differ in how they interpret the ambiguous subject, the LXX reads 'they reap a field not their own', but these reflect interpretive decisions rather than different Hebrew manuscripts.
Reception History
Job 24:6 has been read across Christian tradition primarily as a cry of protest against economic injustice. Early church fathers, such as Chrysostom and Gregory the Great, saw in Job's description a type of Christ who identified with the poor and was stripped of all possessions. During the Middle Ages, the verse was used in commentaries that warned the powerful against exploiting the weak. Reformation-era interpreters, including Calvin, read the verse as evidence that God permits the wicked to prosper for a time while the righteous suffer, a mystery that faith must endure without full explanation. In modern times, the verse has been taken up by liberation theologians and Christian social justice movements as a scriptural ground for standing with the dispossessed and calling systems of oppression into account.
Preaching This Verse
Three-point outline
- The broken safety net. The verse shows what happens when God’s provision for the poor (gleaning rights) is twisted, either by the rich stealing what the poor have grown, or by the poor being forced to steal from the rich just to survive.
- Two sides of one injustice. Whether the wicked reap or the destitute glean, the system is broken. Both readings accuse the powerful of causing this crisis.
- Job’s protest as prayer. Job does not accept this as normal. He brings the raw pain before God, trusting that God sees and will answer.
Five-point outline
- The identity of the reapers: a deliberate grammatical ambiguity.
- The doubled loss: the poor lose their crop, the poor lose their dignity.
- The legal backdrop: gleaning was meant to protect, not humiliate.
- The cry for divine intervention: Job calls for God to take action.
- The hope beyond the verse: the God who hears the oppressed will not stay silent forever.
Illustration hooks
- A farmer works all year, then watches a stranger’s cattle trample the crop because the fence was torn down and no one will fix it.
- A minimum-wage worker picks fruit hour after hour, but the grocery store sells it for a price he could never afford himself.
- A family forced to live in a car, eating from a dumpster behind a supermarket, doing what it takes to survive, yet blamed for being there.
Questions your congregation is asking
- Why does God let the wicked get away with taking from the poor?
- Is it ever right to break the law to feed your family?
- How should Christians respond when systems that are supposed to help the vulnerable fail?
Leading a Discussion
In Job 24:6, the poet leaves the subject of the verbs deliberately vague. This small-group session explores why Job might have chosen this ambiguity, and what it teaches us about crying out to God when the world seems upside down.
Discussion questions
- Read Job 24:2, 6 aloud. What picture of society do these verses paint? Who is doing what to whom?
- Look at verse 6. Who do you imagine is the subject of “they cut” and “they glean”? What clues in the text or context lead you to that conclusion?
- Job’s friends believe the righteous always prosper and the wicked always suffer. How does this scene challenge that belief?
- The Hebrew word for “glean” (laqash) in the Piel stem can mean “to strip bare.” How does that shade the meaning, whether the subjects are the poor or the wicked?
- Compare verse 6 with the gleaning laws in Leviticus 19:9, 10 and Deuteronomy 24:19, 21. What does the contrast say about Job’s world?
- Why is it important that Job brings this complaint to God rather than just resigning himself to the way things are?
- How might this verse shape the way we pray for justice today, especially in situations where the lines between victim and oppressor seem blurred?
Word Study
The key original-language words in this verse. Select any word for its full lexicon entry — meaning, every occurrence in Scripture, and related words.
Cross-References
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (TSK, public domain)
| Deuteronomy 28:33 | A nation which you don’t know will eat the fruit of your ground and all of your work. You will only be oppressed and crushed always, |
| Deuteronomy 28:51 | They will eat the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed. They also won’t leave you grain, new wine, oil, the increase of your livestock, or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. |
| Judges 6:3 | So it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the children of the east came up against them. |
| Judges 6:6 | Israel was brought very low because of Midian; and the children of Israel cried to Yahweh. |
| Micah 6:15 | You will sow, but won’t reap. You will tread the olives, but won’t anoint yourself with oil; and crush grapes, but won’t drink the wine. |
Interlinear and lexical data from STEPBible (CC BY 4.0). Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0). Commentaries are public domain.
For personal reflection
Read the devotional page — prayer, application, and "for families"
What the Commentators Say
10 public-domain commentaries, condensed into plain language.
Adam Clarke's Commentary Methodist/Wesleyan 1826
Clarke notes that raiders take crops from fields that do not belong to them. He says these invaders destroy harvests and leave them in the wilderness.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible Protestant 1832
Barnes points out that the original Hebrew word translated as "corn" actually refers to mixed cattle feed, not grain for people. His main observation is that these individuals do not work their own land but instead steal from others' fields, living by plunder rather than honest labor.
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges Anglican 1880
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges notes that Job describes people forced to leave their homes because stronger tribes took their land. These people live in the wilderness surviving on little food while sheltering in rocks and caves.
Geneva Bible Notes Reformed 1599
Geneva Bible Notes sees the wicked as reaping what they have sown by harvesting God’s provision in the field (the world) at an improper time. This shows their punishment comes from their own actions.
Gill's Exposition of the Bible Baptist 1748
Gill highlights the shamelessness of the wicked: they openly harvest the poor's corn while it still stands in the field, not even bothering to steal from barns. He also observes that when the wicked plunder other wicked men's vineyards, one evildoer becomes God's instrument for punishing another.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary Protestant 1871
Jamieson Fausset Brown notes the word gather means to collect at a late time. The wicked harvest their crops late in autumn just as the first harvest is gathered early in spring.
Keil & Delitzsch OT Commentary Protestant 1876
Keil-Delitzsch insists these verses describe the oppressed poor, not a separate class of criminals. They are victims driven from their homes, forced to scavenge like wild asses for roots and herbs. Hired by the rich for menial work like gathering late grapes, they endure nakedness, cold, and rain without shelter.
Lange's Commentary Reformed 1857
Lange highlights that Job is not directly replying to Eliphaz but instead compiling examples of wicked prosperity to prove God withholds visible justice. His catalog of evil is deliberate evidence that divine ways are incomprehensible, showing that suffering does not neatly match human sin.
Matthew Henry's Commentary Reformed/Presbyterian 1710
Henry notes that God knows every moment even as the wicked enjoy temporary success. He holds that though the Almighty sees all times (past present and future) he does not immediately punish those who ignore him.
Wesley's Explanatory Notes Methodist/Wesleyan 1754
Wesley observes that the oppressors are utterly indiscriminate in their greed. They rob not only the innocent but even the wicked, plundering those who are just as sinful as themselves. No one is safe from their cruelty.