Job 24:12

Men groan from out of the city,.... Because of the oppressions and injuries done to them, so that not only the poor in the country that were employed in the fields, and oliveyards, and vineyards,

Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof. Instances of the wicked doing the worst deeds with seeming impunity. Some - the wicked.

Men groan under the burden of injuries and grievous oppressions. From out of the city; not only in deserts or less inhabited places, where these tyrants have the greater opportunity and advantage to practise their villanies; but even in cities, where there is a face of order and government, and courts of justice, and a multitude of people to observe and restrain such actions; whereby they plainly declare that they neither fear God nor reverence man. The soul of the wounded; either, 1. Properly, their soul sympathizing with the body, and being grieved for its insupportable miseries, crieth to God and men for help. Or rather, 2. The life or blood (which oft cometh under that name) of those who are there wounded unto death, as this word properly signifies, , crieth aloud unto God for vengeance, ,10, whereby God might seem in some sort obliged to punish them; and yet he did not, as the next words declare. Yet God layeth not folly to them: so the sense is, yet God doth not impute or lay to their charge this folly or wickedness, which in Scripture is commonly called folly; i.e. he takes no notice of these horrid oppressions, nor hears the cries of the oppressed, nor punishes the oppressors. Or, yet God (who seeth and permitteth all this) disposeth, or ordereth, or doth, (for all these things this Hebrew verb signifies,) nothing which is absurd, or foolish, or unsavoury, i.e. doth nothing in this permission and connivance unworthy of himself, or which a wise and considerate man cannot relish or approve, or which is not in itself righteous and reasonable, though we do not always discern the reasonableness of it.

Job 24:12 Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out: yet God layeth not folly [to them].Ver. 12. Men groan from out of the city] viz. Under the pressures of their oppressors. Thus did Jerusalem, that faithful city, when once become a harlot; it was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers, Isaiah 1:21. The like did the city of Rome, when, under the government of Marius set up against Sulla, she cried out that the remedy was worse than the disease; and under Pompey, Calamitas nostra magnus est; Our calamity is great, and under the Caesars, that the names of their good emperors might all be set down in the compass of a signet ring; and again under the popes, that for many years together she had not had the happiness to be ruled by any but reprobates; Heu, heu, Domine Deus, saith Fasciculus temporum, bitterly bewailing Rome’ s misery under her turbulent tyrants, Hildebrand, Urban II (whom Cardinal Benno worthily calleth Turban), Boniface VIII, and many other such like monsters. Of most great cities it may be said, as of that strange vineyard in Palestine, Isaiah 5:7, God "looked for judgment, but behold oppression" (Heb. a scab); "for righteousness, but behold a cry." And the soul of the wounded (of the deadly wounded) crieth out] Anima confossorum voci feratur, sc. For grief; and in prayer to God for ease. Yet God layeth not folly to them] Deus non ponit prohibitionem, so one of the Rabbis renereth it. God putteth not a stop to the proceedings, he punisheth not those tyrants who do oppress whole cities, making their lust a law, and overbearing all right with their Volumus et iubemus; we will and we judge, nothing at all moved with the groans of the oppressed city, or with the outcries of the wounded. Word for word it is, Deus non interponit insulsum quid, God interposeth not anything senseless or unsavoury; that is, he suffereth not any cross meanwhile to befall them; yea, he so carrieth the matter as if he favoured them; yea, approved and prospered their crafty and cruel practices: for they live happy, obtain victories, are magnified among men, they flatter themselves in their own eyes, until their iniquity be found to be hateful, Psalms 36:2. Meanwhile, felix scelus virtus vocatur, as the orator speaketh, their prosperous villany is called virtue (Cicero, de Divin. lib. 2); and if any man mutter against them, yea, if he cry them not up, he is looked upon as a traitor, as Thraseas, that noble Roman, was by Nero (Dio in Ner.).

(12) Men groan from out of the city.—Here a survey of the oppressions wrought within the city walls is taken. Yet God layeth not folly to them.—That is, to those who are the cause of their wrongs, their oppressors.

Verse 12. Men groan from out of the city] This is a new paragraph. After having shown the oppressions carried on in the country, he takes a view of those carried on in the town. Here the miseries are too numerous to be detailed. The poor in such places are often in the most wretched state; they are not only badly fed, and miserably clothed, but also most unwholesomely lodged. I was once appointed with a benevolent gentleman, J. S., Esq., to visit a district in St. Giles's London, to know the real state of the poor. We took the district in House Row, and found each dwelling full of people, dirt, and wretchedness. Neither old nor young had the appearance of health: some were sick, and others lying dead, in the same place! Several beds, if they might be called such, on the floor in the same apartment; and, in one single house, sixty souls! These were groaning under various evils; and the soul of the wounded, wounded in spirit, and afflicted in body, cried out to God and man for help! It would have required no subtle investigation to have traced all these miseries to the doors, the hands, the lips, and the hearts, of ruthless landlords; or to oppressive systems of public expenditure in the support of ruinous wars, and the stagnation of trade and destruction of commerce occasioned by them: to which must be added the enormous taxation to meet this expenditure. Yet God layeth not folly to them.] He does not impute their calamities to their own folly. Or, according to the Vulgate, Et Deus inultum abire non patitur; "And God will not leave (these disorders) unpunished." But the Hebrew may be translated And God doth not attend to their prayers. Job's object was to show, in opposition to the mistaken doctrine of his friends, that God did not hastily punish every evil work, nor reward every good one. That vice often went long unpunished, and virtue unrewarded; and that we must not judge of a man's state either by his prosperity or adversity. Therefore, there might be cases in which the innocent oppressed poor were crying to God for a redress of their grievances, and were not immediately heard; and in which their oppressors were faring sumptuously every day, without any apparent mark of the Divine displeasure. These sentiments occur frequently.

12. Men groan from out of the city] Rather, according to the pointing, from out of the populous city they groan. In this, however, there is no parallelism to the “soul of the wounded” in next clause. By a slight change of pointing, and as read by the Syriac, the sense is obtained: from out the city the dying groan. The phrase “from out” means merely “in connexion with” or in the cities, comp. Psalms 72:16. Reference is made to the cities in order to indicate that this injustice and cruel oppression suffered by men is universal, in city and country alike. layeth not folly to them] Rather, regardeth not the folly, or, wrong. The same word occurred in ch. Job 1:22, see note. All this oppression is manifest on the face of the earth among men, but God giveth no heed to the wrong—He appointeth no days (Job 24:1) for doing judgment and staying the injustice.

Men groan from out of the city - The evident meaning of this is, that the sorrows caused by oppression were not confined to the deserts and to solitary places; were not seen only where the wandering

12. Men groan — By changing the pointing of ξϊιν(men) to ξϊιν(the dead,) Ewald, Zockler, etc., read, “Out of the cities the dying groan;” but, against this, is the past participal form mathim, (the