Bible Strands
Job 24:9
The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast; the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job addresses his friends while cataloging the unchecked oppression of the vulnerable, describing a moment when systemic injustice strips protection from the most defenseless.
The words — יִגְזְלוּ (Yigze lu) means they tear away, and יַחְבֹּלוּ (yachbo lu) means they take pledges, describing the seizure of a nursing infant.
The thread — This pattern of debt-driven exploitation appears in Nehemiah 5:5 and 2 Kings 4:1, where financial ruin forces families into bondage or loss of children.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of how economic pressure directly targets the defenseless, requiring the reader to confront the reality that debt enforcement can override basic human protection.
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
They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor.
Cross-references
- Nehemiah 5:5 We and our children are just like our countrymen and their children, yet we are subjecting our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters are already enslaved, but we are powerless to redeem them because our fields and vineyards belong to others.”
- 2 Kings 4:1 Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And now his creditor is coming to take my two children as his slaves!”