Job 24:2

[Some] remove the landmarks,.... Anciently set to distinguish one man's land from another, to secure property, and preserve from encroachments; but some were so wicked as either secretly in the night

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.

Some remove the landmarks; or, they (i.e. the wicked, of whom he here treats) touch (to wit, in an unlawful manner, and with evil design, as this word is oft used, as ,29 Rth 2:9, so as to invade, or possess, or remove) the landmarks, by which men’ s lands are discerned, and their properties secured; that so they may enlarge their own border by diminishing their neighbour; which is so horrid an act of injustice, that it hath not only been severely forbidden by God, 27:17 23:10, but also declared execrable by the heathens, among whom it was permitted to any man to kill him that did it. Feed thereof; or, feed them. They do not hide or kill them, but openly feed them, either in their oppressed neighbour’ s ground, which, by taking away the landmarks, they have made their own, or in their own pastures, without any remorse, or shame, or fear of punishment, either from God or men.

Job 24:2 [Some] remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed [thereof].Ver. 2. Some remove the landmarks] Here he instanceth in all sorts of wicked persons, with their seculi laetitia, impunita nequitia; they go pointblank against God’ s commandments; they please not him, and are contrary to all men; and yet who but they, so long as it will last? Some remove (or touch) the landmarks, which the very heathens held to be sacred, and not once to be touched. Numa, king of the Romans, made a law, that if any hid or removed a landmark he should be slain, by the next that met him, as a sacriligious person, or public pest, Inter ethnicos Terminus numinis loco habitus est. God’ s law curseth such an offender, Deuteronomy 27:15-26, and the civil laws pass sentence of death upon him. The Chaldee paraphrast and old Rabbis understand this and the following offences, of the old world, full of rapacity and impiety. But are there not the like and worse evils found also among us, upon whom the ends of the world are come, in these last and worst times, as Bernard fitly yoketh them? In his ultimis et pessimis temporibus. Read the catalogue and compare. Reckon, also, that you then read or hear this chapter aright, when, applying each passage to yourselves, you learn to wash your hands in innocence, or at least in tears for these abominations; as also, if ye be not offended at the prosperity of those who fall into all or but some of these wickednesses, since the time is at hand when account must be given of all things done in the body, whether good or evil. They violently take away flocks, and feed thereof] Though they eat that on earth which they shall digest in hell. Or, and feed them; viz. openly and impudently, with as much insolence as injustice; and as if they had got them by right, and not by rapine and robbery. Lavater upon the text maketh mention of a certain Helvetian tyrant, who violently took away the oxen from the plough of an honest countryman, and told him that it was fit that clowns should draw the plough themselves, without the help of oxen.

(2) Some remove the landmarks.—Now follows a description of the wrong-doings of various classes of men. The removal of landmarks was expressly provided against by the Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 19:14; Deuteronomy 27:17). And feed thereof.—Rather, probably, feed them: i.e., pasture them, the more easy to do when the landmarks are so removed.

Verse 2. Some remove the landmarks] Stones or posts were originally set up to ascertain the bounds of particular estates: and this was necessary in open countries, before hedges and fences were formed. Wicked and covetous men often removed the landmarks or termini, and set them in on their neighbours' ground, that, by contracting their boundaries, they might enlarge their own. The law of Moses denounces curses on those who remove their neighbours' landmarks. See Deuteronomy 19:14; Deuteronomy 27:17, and the note on the former place, where the subject is considered at large. They violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.] Mr. Good translates ירעו yiru, they destroy, deriving the word, not from רעה raah, to feed, but from רע ra, to rend, to destroy. The Septuagint had read רעה roch, a shepherd; and therefore have translated ποιμνιονσυνποιμενιἁρπασαντες, "violently carrying off both the flock and the shepherd."

2–4. Job now proceeds to illustrate his complaint of the absence of righteousness in God’s rule of the world. The instances are in the first place general.

Some remove the land-marks - Landmarks are pillars or stones set up to mark the boundaries of a farm.

2. Some remove the landmarks — The violence of Job’s emotion is marked by his omission of the subject — the wicked.