A DAY OF JUSTICE

“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^[a];
    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?”