What Does Job 24:2 Mean?
Some push back the landmarks; they tear away flocks and feed on them.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.THE KEY
The takers do not merely cross a boundary: they erase the line that protects the flock, then feed on what it guarded.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present pattern of exploitation: a boundary is removed, a flock is seized, and the takers make it their own sustenance. What looks like a violation of a line ends in the taking of living things protected by that line.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what someone can seize and profit from becomes theirs by right.
THE ROOT
גְּבֻלוֹת
gevulot
GROWS FROM
גבל
g-b-l
To bound or set a limit.
“landmarks” in this verse is gevulot. The word names boundaries, the lines that define and protect what belongs within them. The verse links removing those limits directly to taking the flock: the theft begins with making the boundary disappear.
ALSO GROWS
gābal: to bound or mark a limit
גָּבַל
This verb names the boundary-setting action that the English word “landmarks” leaves implicit.
gevul: boundary, border, or territory
גְּבוּל
This singular form makes clear that the landmarks are limits around an inheritance, not just markers in a landscape.
גָּזְלוּ
gazelu
GROWS FROM
גזל
g-z-l
To rob or seize what belongs to another.
“tear away” in this verse is gazelu. The verb identifies the taking as robbery, not an ordinary transfer. The removed boundary and the stolen flock belong to one mechanism: making another’s protected possession available to the taker.
ALSO GROWS
gāzal: to rob or take by force
גָּזַל
This verb names the act carried by the verse’s “violently take away.”
gezelah: robbery or something robbed
גְּזֵלָה
This noun makes visible the result of the action: what was protected becomes stolen property.
וַיִּרְעוּ
vayyir'u
GROWS FROM
רעה
r-ʿ-h
To pasture, tend, or feed a flock.
“feed on them” in this verse is vayyir'u. The word translated “feed” belongs to the language of pasturing and tending a flock. Its other branches name shepherds and pasture, so the verse shows the takers turning what should be cared for into their own nourishment.
ALSO GROWS
ro'eh: shepherd or one who tends a flock
רֹעֶה
This branch reveals the care-bearing role embedded in the verb used for feeding the flock.
mir'eh: pasture or grazing place
מִרְעֶה
This branch joins the verb to the ground and provision that sustain a flock.
THE PATTERN
When someone removes the boundary that protects another, the breach can become a path for taking and consuming what is vulnerable.
Do not move the boundary of the ages, and do not enter the fields of the fatherless.Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD, Woe to those who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock?who devour widows' houses, and for show make long prayers. These will receive greater judgment.THE THREAD
Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD, Woe to those who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock?Job’s “feed thereof” and Ezekiel’s “feed themselves” use the same Hebrew root, רעה (ra’ah), meaning to pasture, tend, or feed a flock. Ezekiel makes the reversal explicit: the ones charged with tending the flock make themselves its pasture.
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