Bible Strands
Job 24:11
They crush olives within their walls; they tread the winepresses, but go thirsty.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job delivers this line within his extended indictment of the powerful who manipulate legal systems and exploit the vulnerable, addressing his friends amid his broader lament over unexplained suffering. The speech occurs during his fourth poetic discourse, where he catalogs the brutal realities of the oppressed without attributing them to immediate retribution.
The words — The Hebrew יַצְהִ֑ירוּ (yatz.Hi.ru) translates literally to "they press out oil," paired with יְקָבִ֥ים (ye.ka.Vim), "wine-presses," denoting the forced extraction of agricultural wealth by those who control the processing infrastructure.
The thread — This depiction of stolen labor resonates with the withheld wages crying out in James 5:4, the unjust construction projects in Jeremiah 22:13, and the Deuteronomy 25:4 prohibition against muzzling the working ox.
Why it lands — The text demands acknowledgment of systemic theft and the quiet endurance of those who produce sustenance they cannot consume, requiring readers to confront exploitation as a present reality rather than a deferred theological problem.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Which make oil within their walls, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 22:13 “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,
- James 5:4 Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.
- Deuteronomy 25:4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.