Job 24:10

Sheaves might have given a little food by beating out the grain, but even this was stolen from the poor.

The wicked rich have no pity for them; they make use of them for their work. ... This describes the poor class that had hardly any regular work to do. ... A sheaf or two might be forgotten at harvest time, but they have found it out, and they go after the poor to get their sheaf back.

The poor are robbed of their very clothes. They work hungry among the sheaves. At the oil press and in the vineyard they are kept from sharing. The oppressed groan in the city — and God takes no notice of it! It is an awful picture of facts only too well known to them — and to us. How can Eliphaz make such facts fit his theory that evil is always punished in this life? But how can God close His eyes to these things, and afflict a faithful man instead of these wrongdoers? This is Job's great trouble, and he has found no solution for it.

Had he supplied water to the weary, or bread to the starving? Had he not been inhuman enough to take a pledge from his brother for no reason? Had he not even stripped the naked of their clothing? … And if he sent widows away empty, and broke the arms of the fatherless instead of holding them up, who could wonder that snares were all around him?

Job's friends did not have any such clear charge to lay against him, but only imagined he must have done wrong. But here were cases of obvious wickedness, and God had not dealt with them as He was dealing with Job.

The main thought in this part of Job's reply is simple. In this life, and often right up to the very end, men escape the penalties they deserve. He does not lift the curtain that hides the awful future. His purpose is to reply to his friends' arguments, and he answers them well.

God does not take any notice of it, and the reason is that He is waiting for that day.

Their very wealth tempts the rich to hold back the wages of the poor. Only their own affairs matter in their eyes. They put off the claims of people who live from hand to mouth until it suits them. But the debt cries aloud to Him Who always feels for the poor. The cries of the reapers may not have reached the rich. But they entered into the ears of the Lord of hosts, and His blow would fall when least expected.

Now what a wonderful love it is toward the very people to whom the gospel is preached. It was to the "poor" that the gospel was preached; they were especially the object of the Lord Jesus. There never was such a thing before, since the world began. Nobody ever made them his great object, and that for eternity. But Job could not know anything of that.