24:9 The fatherless child is snatched 1 from the breast, 2
the infant of the poor is taken as a pledge. 3
24:14 Before daybreak 4 the murderer rises up;
he kills the poor and the needy;
in the night he is 5 like a thief. 6
1 tn The verb with no expressed subject is here again taken in the passive: “they snatch” becomes “[child] is snatched.”
2 tn This word is usually defined as “violence; ruin.” But elsewhere it does mean “breast” (Isa 60:16; 66:11), and that is certainly what it means here.
3 tc The MT has a very brief and strange reading: “they take as a pledge upon the poor.” This could be taken as “they take a pledge against the poor” (ESV). Kamphausen suggested that instead of עַל (’al, “against”) one should read עוּל (’ul, “suckling”). This is supported by the parallelism. “They take as pledge” is also made passive here.
4 tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.
5 tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).
6 sn The point is that he is like a thief in that he works during the night, just before the daylight, when the advantage is all his and the victim is most vulnerable.