5 Like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go about their labor of foraging food; the wasteland provides food for their children.

Other Translations of Job 24:5

King James Version

5 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.

English Standard Version

5 Behold, like wild donkeys in the desert the poorHebrew they go out to their toil, seeking game; the wasteland yields food for their children.

The Message

5 The poor, like stray dogs and cats, scavenge for food in back alleys.

New King James Version

5 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.

New Living Translation

5 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.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on Job 24:5

Commentary on Job 24:1-12

(Read Job 24:1-12)

Job discourses further about the prosperity of the wicked. That many live at ease who are ungodly and profane, he had showed, ch. xxi. Here he shows that many who live in open defiance of all the laws of justice, succeed in wicked practices; and we do not see them reckoned with in this world. He notices those that do wrong under pretence of law and authority; and robbers, those that do wrong by force. He says, "God layeth not folly to them;" that is, he does not at once send his judgments, nor make them examples, and so manifest their folly to all the world. But he that gets riches, and not by right, at his end shall be a fool, Jeremiah 17:11.