Immerse: Poets Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 312
300
IMMERSE
•
POETS
24:2-18
Evil people steal land by moving the boundary markers.
They steal livestock and put them in their own pastures.
They take the orphan’s donkey
and demand the widow’s ox as security for a loan.
The poor are pushed off the path;
the needy must hide together for safety.
Like wild donkeys in the wilderness,
the poor must spend all their time looking for food,
searching even in the desert for food for their children.
They harvest a field they do not own,
and they glean in the vineyards of the wicked.
All night they lie naked in the cold,
without clothing or covering.
They are soaked by mountain showers,
and they huddle against the rocks for want of a home.
“The wicked snatch a widow’s child from her breast,
taking the baby as security for a loan.
The poor must go about naked, without any clothing.
They harvest food for others while they themselves are starving.
They press out olive oil without being allowed to taste it,
and they tread in the winepress as they suffer from thirst.
The groans of the dying rise from the city,
and the wounded cry for help,
yet God ignores their moaning.
“Wicked people rebel against the light.
They refuse to acknowledge its ways
or stay in its paths.
The murderer rises in the early dawn
to kill the poor and needy;
at night he is a thief.
The adulterer waits for the twilight,
saying, ‘No one will see me then.’
He hides his face so no one will know him.
Thieves break into houses at night
and sleep in the daytime.
They are not acquainted with the light.
The black night is their morning.
They ally themselves with the terrors of the darkness.
“But they disappear like foam down a river.
Everything they own is cursed,
and they are afraid to enter their own vineyards.
