(6) They reap every one his corn.--Or, probably, the corn, that is, of the wicked tyrant. While they reap his corn and cut his provender, they have to go without themselves.

Verse 6. - They reap every one his corn in the field. When they have scoured the desert, the marauders approach the cultivated ground bordering on it, and thence carry off, each of them. a quantity of "fodder," or "provender" (Revised Version), for the sustentation of their horses. And they gather the vintage of the wicked; rather, as in the margin, and the wicked gather the vintage. (So Rosenmuller and Professor Lee.) Sometimes they burst into the vineyards, and rob them, carrying off the ripe grapes.

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, Jer 17:11.They reap everyone his corn in the field,.... Not the poor, who are obliged to reap the corn of the wicked for them without any wages, as some; but rather the wicked reap the corn of the poor; they are so insolent and impudent, that they do not take the corn out of their barns by stealth, but while it is standing in the field; they come openly and reap it down, as if it was their own, without any fear of God or men: it is observed, that the word (k) signifies a mixture of the poorer sorts of corn, which is scarce anything better than food for cattle; yet this they cut down and carry off, as forage for their horses and asses at least. Some of the ancient versions, taking it to be two words, render them, "which is not their own" (l); they go into a field that is not theirs, and reap corn that do not belong to them, that they have no right unto, and so are guilty of great injustice, and of doing injury to others:

and they gather the vintage of the wicked; gather the grapes off of the vines of wicked men, which are gathered, as the word signifies, at the latter end of the year, in autumn; and though they belong to wicked men like themselves, yet they spare them not, but seize on all that come to hand, whether the property of good men or bad men; and thus sometimes one wicked man is an instrument of punishing another: or "the wicked gather the vintage" (m); that is, of the poor; as they reap where they have not sown, they gather of that they have not planted.

(k) "migma suum", Bolducius; "farraginem ejus vel suam", Tigurine version, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius, Michaelis. (l) Sept. "non suum", V. L. so the Targum, and Aben Ezra, Grotius, Codurcus. (m) "et in vinea (aliena) vindemiant impii", Tigurine version; "vineasque vindemiant impii", Castalio.