The murderer rises before it is light, that he may kill the poor and needy, and in the night he is like a thief.
Job's friends insist that God always punishes evil in this life. He answers by pointing at crimes everyone can see going unpunished. Verse 14 gives the first portrait: the murderer, who kills the helpless and turns thief after dark.
Where the verse sits in Job's argument
The whole chapter is a list of real crimes offered as evidence. Job is not describing strangers in a far country. He names crimes his friends already knew about. Then he asks why their theory leaves them out.
Samuel RidoutThe 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 far 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, oh, 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 for this he has found no solution.
The murderer's working day
The verse tracks one man through daylight and dark. Commentators differ on the timing. The ESV has him rise "before it is light." Others read it as rising with the light. Either way, he is at his work whatever the hour.
Leslie M. Grant"The murderer rises with the light" (v.14), though he does not know the light. Without any pang of conscience he kills the poor and needy. If he commits his evil act at night, he is like a thief, hiding until the moment he chooses to murder his victim.
His targets are chosen for their defencelessness, and the timing is chosen to match.
Samuel RidoutThe murderer lies in wait for the workman going out at dawn to his labour, and turns to stealing in the night.
Violence and corruption side by side
Verse 15 sets the adulterer right beside the murderer. The pairing matters. One man takes life; the other takes what is not his in secret. Both share the same instinct — they need not to be seen.
William KellyThen he describes a still worse class. That is a man — whether higher or lower in rank does not matter — a man of violence, the murderer. The man who has his quarrel, and the man whom nothing will satisfy but the life of his victim. "The murderer rising with the light kills the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief" — who will be ashamed to show that he was robbing the poor. "The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me" — the corrupt man. Violence and corruption are the two great marks of human evil… They cannot bear to be known, for what they are and what they are after.
Why such men are not stopped
Job's question is the reader's question: if God sees this, why does nothing happen? Kelly answers that the day has not been cancelled. It is waiting for someone.
William KellyNow Job faces this question — how is it, if the times are so bad, that the day of retribution does not come? We do not see it. It is coming; it awaits the only One who can perfectly deal with evil.
That reckoning lies past the point where Job could see it, which is exactly why the chapter feels unresolved.
Leslie M. GrantIf we consider this life only, then certainly everything is out of balance and frustrating. But all God's accounts are not settled on this side of the grave.
Summary
- Light refused. The murderer is up early, yet he "does not know the light." His problem is not ignorance. It is a refusal to live where he can be seen.
- Light avoided. Night turns the same man into a thief, because, as the commentary puts it, such men "cannot bear to be known, for what they are and what they are after."
- Light's two enemies. Verses 14 and 15 give violence and corruption, the two great marks of human evil. One strikes in the open; the other waits for twilight.
- Light's victims. His targets are the poor and needy, and the workman heading out at dawn — the very people the Lord Jesus later made His own object.
- Light delayed, not denied. Job never sees the day of reckoning. It is still coming, and it waits for the only One who can deal with evil perfectly.