Behold, as wild asses, &c.— See, like the wild asses in the desart, they go forth to their labour: they are up with the dawn for bare food: the common must find them meat for the children. This, and the following verses, to the 11th, describe the extreme misery of the poor people under those oppressors. "They go out before day, in droves, like the wild asses in the desart, to their labour, and that for bare food only: for, as for their families, the wilderness must supply them. Obliged to lie in the open air, with neither covering to keep them warm, nor a hut over their heads to keep them dry, they must cling close to the rock to shelter them from storms; their children are torn from the breast to be sold into slavery. Job 24:9. The orphan is torn by violence from the breast; the garments of the poor are taken for a pledge: Job 24:10. They go about naked, because they have no clothing; and those who are starving for hunger carry the sheaves: Job 24:11. They work during the noon-tide heat in their vineyards: they tread their vine-vats, but are athirst: a misery the more exquisite, as it was heightened by the immediate presence of what would relieve them; but they dared not stretch forth their hands to take it;" Heath: with whom Houbigant agrees, except in the 5th and 6th verses, which he renders thus, Behold, like wild asses, which go forth into the desart for their food, ready for their prey, industrious to seek out food for their young; (Job 24:6.) So they reap the corn in the field by night; they gather the vintage by wickedness; (Job 24:7.) so that the naked lodge, &c.
Job 24:6. They reap every one his corn in the field— Mingled corn, or dredge. Margin. Job apparently alludes to the provender, or heap of chopped straw or hay, lying mingled together in the field, after having passed under a threshing instrument; to which he compares the spoils that were taken from passengers, so early as his time, by those who lived somewhat after the present manner of the wild Arabs; which spoils are to them what the harvest and vintage were to others. With this agrees that other passage, chap. Job 6:5 where this word occurs: Will the ox low (in complaint) over his provender? or fodder, as it is translated in our version; i.e. when he has not only straw enough, but mixed with barley. See Observations, p. 210, and Judges 19:19.