¹ “Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?
Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?
² There are those who move boundary stones;
they pasture flocks they have stolen.
³ They drive away the orphan’s donkey
and take the widow’s ox in pledge.
⁴ They thrust the needy from the path
and force all the poor of the land into hiding.
⁵ Like wild donkeys in the desert,
the poor go about their labor of foraging food;
the wasteland provides food for their children.
⁶ They gather fodder in the fields
and glean in the vineyards of the wicked.
⁷ Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked;
they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold.
⁸ They are drenched by mountain rains
and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.
⁹ The fatherless child is snatched from the breast;
the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.
¹⁰ Lacking clothes, they go about naked;
they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.
¹¹ They crush olives among the terraces;
they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
¹² The groans of the dying rise from the city,
and the souls of the wounded cry out for help.
But God charges no one with wrongdoing.
¹³ “There are those who rebel against the light,
who do not know its ways
or stay in its paths.
¹⁴ When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up,
kills the poor and needy,
and in the night steals forth like a thief.
¹⁵ The eye of the adulterer watches for dusk;
he thinks, ‘No eye will see me,’
and he keeps his face concealed.
¹⁶ In the dark, thieves break into houses,
but by day they shut themselves in;
they want nothing to do with the light.
¹⁷ For all of them, midnight is their morning;
they make friends with the terrors of darkness.
¹⁸ “Yet they are foam on the surface of the water;
their portion of the land is cursed,
so that no one goes to the vineyards.
¹⁹ As heat and drought snatch away the melted snow,
so the grave snatches away those who have sinned.
²⁰ The womb forgets them,
the worm feasts on them;
the wicked are no longer remembered
but are broken like a tree.
²¹ They prey on the barren and childless woman,
and to the widow they show no kindness.
²² But God drags away the mighty by his power;
though they become established, they have no assurance of life.
²³ He may let them rest in a feeling of security,
but his eyes are on their ways.
²⁴ For a little while they are exalted, and then they are gone;
they are brought low and gathered up like all others;
they are cut off like heads of grain.
²⁵ “If this is not so, who can prove me false
and reduce my words to nothing?”