Behold, like wild donkeys in the desert the poor go out to their toil, seeking game; the wasteland yields food for their children.
Job has stopped arguing about theory and started pointing at the world. He lists crimes nobody punishes, then turns to the victims — the poor scavenging at dawn so their children can eat — and asks why God lets it stand.
The Charge Job Is Building
Job sets crimes everyone could name beside his own case. He asks why God deals with him and not with them.
Leslie M. GrantJob wonders why God, who is Almighty, does not take account of all that happens in time. He wonders why those who know Him never see Him deal seriously with gross evil when it is right there in front of them. Men move boundary stones and steal land from others. They take flocks by force and feed on them. They drive away the donkey of the fatherless and take the widow's ox as a pledge. They push the needy off the road and force the poor of the land into hiding. These were evils publicly known to take place. 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 manifest wickedness, and God had not dealt with them as He was dealing with Job.
Who the Wild Donkeys Are
The donkeys are not animals. They are the poor who were just pushed off the road.
Samuel RidoutIn his mind Job follows these poor sufferers, driven from their homes by the wicked. He describes their miserable struggle to stay alive as wanderers, the life they have been forced into. With a few bold strokes, like a man who knows the scene, Job pictures these starving people. They are driven out like animals, to gather the bare minimum for their children however they can.
Work With No Wage Attached
Their "toil" sounds like ordinary work. It is not. There is no employer and no wage — only an early start and whatever turns up.
William KellyNow we see another class. We see the poor and distressed here below. "Like wild donkeys in the desert, they go out to their work." They are the people who have nothing, the "masses." They have no skilled work. They live by picking up odd jobs, with all the uncertainty and suffering that this brings. "Rising early for prey" — before daylight. And prey, because nothing is settled. It is whatever they can catch.
(Kelly is working from an older translation; the ESV reads "go out to their toil, seeking game.")
Why the Wilderness Is Their Field
The desert feeds their children because nothing else will. The fields would feed them, but the fields belong to someone else — and the poor work them for him.
William KellyThink of that — the barren sands of the wilderness, that is all they have. And why? Because they have no land of their own. "They reap every one his own grain in the field" — that is the rich man's grain — "and they gather the grape harvest of the wicked." Now Job calls them not "rich" but "wicked."
The Question That Breaks the Friends' Theory
Job's friends held one rule: suffering proves guilt, and God settles every account in this life. This scene will not fit the rule. It leaves Job with a question he cannot answer either.
Samuel RidoutHow can Eliphaz make such facts fit in with 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 Delay Is Not Indifference
Job had no answer for God's silence. Other writers take up his question and ask when judgment does come.
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.
Summary
- Driven. The wild donkeys are people — the poor forced off their land into open country, gathering what their children need however they can.
- Dawn. Their work is no trade and no wage. They rise before light to catch whatever they can.
- Dispossessed. The desert feeds them because the fields are not theirs. They harvest grain and grapes for the men Job calls wicked.
- Disproof. This scene breaks the friends' rule that suffering proves guilt. God lets the wrongdoers alone and afflicts a faithful man instead.
- Delayed. Job could not explain God's silence. The day of reckoning is not cancelled. It waits for the only One who can deal with evil perfectly.