What Does Job 24:6 Mean in the King James?
They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The word rendered “corn” means fodder, so this is a picture of people gathering food to keep themselves fed.
THE MEANING
People reap fodder in fields and gather grapes from the wicked’s vineyard. The verse places need in the middle of the harvest: food may grow in abundance while access to it remains uncertain. Its scene speaks now wherever people must gather their nourishment from land held by others.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a full field means everyone nearby is fed; abundance can coexist with insecure access to food.
THE ROOT
בְּלִילוֹ
belilo
GROWS FROM
בלל
Balal (בָּלַל) means to mix or mingle; belil (בְּלִיל) means mixed fodder or provender.
The English “corn” can sound like a crop in general, but this word names feed. Its root points to food as a mixture gathered for nourishment, bringing the body’s need directly into the harvest scene.
ALSO GROWS
balal: To mix or mingle.
בָּלַל
The verb names the action at the root of the word for fodder: food brought together as a mixture.
belil: Mixed fodder or provender.
בְּלִיל
This related form reveals that the verse’s “corn” is food for feeding, not simply a field of grain.
יִקְצֹרוּ
yiqtsoru
GROWS FROM
קצר
Qatsar (קָצַר) means to reap or cut; the same root can also mean to be short or curtailed.
“reap” in this verse is yiqtsoru. Reaping is a cutting: the crop is severed from the land and gathered. The same root can describe being cut short, letting the harvest’s taking and the experience of scarcity echo through one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
qatsir: Harvest or crop.
קָצִיר
This noun names the yield produced by the act of reaping.
qatsar: To be short or curtailed.
קָצַר
The shared root links the cutting of a crop with the sense of something being reduced or cut short.
THE PATTERN
A harvest exposes who can reach food directly and who must glean from a field.
And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter.At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat.THE THREAD
Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance.Job 5:5 uses the same qatsir (קָצִיר, harvest) word-family as Job 24:6’s qatsar (קָצַר, reap). It makes hunger explicit, opening the field and vintage here as food gathered under the pressure of need.
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