Job 24:10

For lack of clothing, they go about naked,

   Hungry, they carry the sheaves.

Imagine that you were so poor you had no more of anything, even clothes. You would probably have traded your clothes for food and slept out in the open with nothing. This is not the homeless too cheap to pay for shelter or the mentally ill not knowing any better, but you actually had to get rid of everything to have enough food to survive one more day. Now imagine the next morning and you have found work carrying food for someone, but you cannot eat any of the food until the workday is over. This is the person in this verse, one meal from starvation working in order to eat one more day.

‘They’ is also ‘the poor’ and ‘the oppressed’. There was also ‘they cause’ in front of this first stitch.

‘Hungry’ was also ‘craving food’. There was also ‘they steal sheaves from the hungry’ as options.

Pretty universal is the agreement to give the hungry and poor food and clothing. At least among those who are not wicked. The wicked won’t give them food or clothing and will indeed take the food and clothing they have from them. Wicked people do not have any clue about God, and act accordingly. The main thrust of society should be to protect the rest of us from ‘them’ in an active form.

I have recently read a couple novels about criminals going to great lengths to steal from others. The characters ranged from too stupid to come in out of the rain to so smart they could track details the cops would never figure out. The common denominator is that they were evil, apart from God, and were willing to take from others to enrich themselves.

I recently restocked my spiral notebook supply so I would have at least enough to get me through their next year of note taking. Each year I wait until the grocery store slashes the prices after school starts, and I stock up. One year I think they were ten cents apiece. This year they were sixty cents, and I even bought some that were not purple to make sure I had enough. Somehow our society has made being prepared a bad thing since it keeps us from overpaying for something we need desperately. We must not forget the the Lord’s prayer teaches us to be delivered from the Evil One, and the Evil One has great influence over our society. Something to pray about tonight at Halloween.

Written 10/3/26, Posted 10/31/26, Job 574/~1070