Job 24:5

Like ¹  wild donkeys in the desert they ²  go out to their labor, ³  seeking diligently for food; the wasteland provides ⁴  food for them and for their children.

Like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go about their labour of foraging food; the wasteland provides food for their children.

"Behold, as wild donkeys in the wilderness They go forth seeking food in their activity, As bread for their children in the desert.

Like the wild donkeys in the desert, the poor must spend all their time just getting enough to keep body and soul together. They go into the desert to search for food for their children.

The poor, like stray dogs and cats, scavenge for food in back alleys.

Like asses in the waste land they go out to their work, looking for food with care; from the waste land they get bread for their children.

Like wild asses in the desert they go out to their toil, scavenging in the wasteland food for their young.

Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert, They go out to their work, searching for food. The wilderness yields food for them and for their children.

Like ¹  wild donkeys in the desert they ²  go out to their labor, ³  seeking diligently for food; the wasteland provides ⁴  food for them and for their children.

¹ tc The verse begins with הֵן (hen); but the LXX, Vulgate, and Syriac all have “like.” R. Gordis (Job, 265) takes הֵן (hen) as a pronoun “they” and supplies the comparative. The sense of the verse is clear in either case.

² tn That is, “the poor.”

³ tc The MT has “in the working/labor of them,” or “when they labor.” Some commentators simply omit these words. Dhorme retains them and moves them to go with עֲרָבָה (’aravah), which he takes to mean “evening”; this gives a clause, “although they work until the evening.” Then, with many others, he takes לוֹ (lo) to be a negative and finishes the verse with “no food for the children.” Others make fewer changes in the text, and as a result do not come out with such a hopeless picture – there is some food found. The point is that they spend their time foraging for food, and they find just enough to survive, but it is a day-long activity. For Job, this shows how unrighteous the administration of the world actually is.

⁴ tn The verb is not included in the Hebrew text but is supplied in the translation.