Like wild donkeys in the wilderness, the poor must spend all their time looking for food, searching even in the desert for food for their children.
Parallel translations
- WEB Behold, as wild donkeys in the desert, they go out to their work, seeking diligently for food. The wilderness yields them bread for their children.
- KJV Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children.
- BSB Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go to work foraging for food; the wasteland is food for their children.
- NKJV Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert, They go out to their work, searching for food. The wilderness yields food for them and for their children.
- NASB “Behold, like wild donkeys in the wilderness They go out scavenging for food in their activity, As bread for their children in the desert.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The poor, driven to the wilderness, scavenge for food like wild donkeys. It matters because oppression reduces people to desperate scrounging.
Overview
Job pictures the dispossessed laboring in the desert, foraging for whatever bread the wasteland yields for their children. Stripped of land and security, they live like wild beasts seeking survival. The verse magnifies the tragedy of poverty caused by human cruelty, a condition God notices and ultimately redeems.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- Ps 104:23Man goes out to his work, to his labor until the evening.
- Job 39:5–7“Who has set the wild donkey free? Or who has loosened the bonds of the swift donkey,
- Mic 2:1Woe to those who devise iniquity and work evil on their beds! When the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand.
- Job 5:5whose harvest the hungry eats up, and take it even out of the thorns. The snare gapes for their substance.
- Job 12:6The tents of robbers prosper. Those who provoke God are secure, who carry their God in their hands.
- Gen 27:40By your sword will you live, and you will serve your brother. It will happen, when you will break loose, that you shall shake his yoke from off your neck.”
- Prov 4:16For they don’t sleep, unless they do evil. Their sleep is taken away, unless they make someone fall.
- Hos 8:9For they have gone up to Assyria, like a wild donkey wandering alone. Ephraim has hired lovers for himself.
- John 18:28They led Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the Praetorium. It was early, and they themselves didn’t enter into the Praetorium, that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.
- Zeph 3:3Her princes within her are roaring lions. Her judges are evening wolves. They leave nothing until the next day.
- Acts 23:12When it was day, some of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul.
- Job 24:14The murderer rises with the light. He kills the poor and needy. In the night he is like a thief.
- Jer 2:24a wild donkey used to the wilderness, that sniffs the wind in her craving. When she is in heat, who can turn her away? All those who seek her will not weary themselves. In her month, they will find her.
- Hos 7:6For they have prepared their heart like an oven, while they lie in wait. Their baker sleeps all the night. In the morning it burns as a flaming fire.
- Gen 16:12He will be like a wild donkey among men. His hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. He will live opposite all of his brothers.”
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 24:5 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.