Job 19:7

Job’s Abandonment and Affliction

19:7 “If ¹  I cry out, ²  ‘Violence!’ ³ 

I receive no answer; ⁴ 

I cry for help,

but there is no justice.

Isaiah 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ⁵ 

they associate with ⁶  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ⁷  payoffs. ⁸ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ⁹ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 5:20

5:20 Those who call evil good and good evil are as good as dead, ¹¹ 

who turn darkness into light and light into darkness,

who turn bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter. ¹² 

Ezekiel 9:9

9:9 He said to me, “The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is extremely great; the land is full of murder, and the city is full of corruption, ¹³  for they say, ‘The Lord has abandoned the land, and the Lord does not see!’ ¹⁴ 

[19:7]  ¹ tn The particle is used here as in 9:11 (see GKC 497 §159.w).

[19:7]  ² tc The LXX has “I laugh at reproach.”

[19:7]  ³ tn The same idea is expressed in Jer 20:8 and Hab 1:2. The cry is a cry for help, that he has been wronged, that there is no justice.

[19:7]  ⁴ tn The Niphal is simply “I am not answered.” See Prov 21:13b.

[1:23]  ⁵ tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”

[1:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ⁸ sn Isaiah may have chosen the word for gifts (שַׁלְמוֹנִים, shalmonim; a hapax legomena here), as a sarcastic pun on what these rulers should have been doing. Instead of attending to peace and wholeness (שָׁלוֹם, shalom), they sought after payoffs (שַׁלְמוֹנִים).

[1:23]  ⁹ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ¹⁰ sn The rich oppressors referred to in Isaiah and the other eighth century prophets were not rich capitalists in the modern sense of the word. They were members of the royal military and judicial bureaucracies in Israel and Judah. As these bureaucracies grew, they acquired more and more land and gradually commandeered the economy and legal system. At various administrative levels bribery and graft become commonplace. The common people outside the urban administrative centers were vulnerable to exploitation in such a system, especially those, like widows and orphans, who had lost their family provider through death. Through confiscatory taxation, conscription, excessive interest rates, and other oppressive governmental measures and policies, they were gradually disenfranchised and lost their landed property, and with it, their rights as citizens. The socio-economic equilibrium envisioned in the law of Moses was radically disturbed.

[5:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “Woe [to] those who call.” See the note at v. 8.

[5:20]  ¹⁰ sn In this verse the prophet denounces the perversion of moral standards. Darkness and bitterness are metaphors for evil; light and sweetness symbolize uprightness.

[9:9]  ¹³ tn Or “lawlessness” (NAB); “perversity” (NRSV). The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT, and its meaning is uncertain. The similar phrase in 7:23 has a common word for “violence.”

[9:9]  ¹⁴ sn The saying is virtually identical to that of the elders in Ezek 8:12.