Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary Verse 4. They turn the needy out of the way ] They will not permit them to go by the accustomed paths; they oblige them to take circuitous routes.
When the Marquis of H. was made ranger of Richmond Park, he thought it his duty to shut up a pathway which had existed for a long time; and those who presumed, after this shutting up, to break the fence, and take that path as formerly, were prosecuted. A cobbler near the place entered an action against the marquis: the cause was tried, the marquis cast, and the path ordered to be opened, on the ground that it had, time out of mind, been a public undisputed path. When one asked the cobbler, "How he could have the boldness to go to law with the Marquis of H.?" he answered, "Because I did not like to leave the world worse than I found it." All tolerated oppression and voluntary forfeiture of ancient rights, are injurious to society at large, and they who wink at them leave the world worse than they found it.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 1-12 - Job discourses further about the prosperity of the wicked. That man live at ease who are ungodly and profane, he had showed, ch. xxi. Her he shows that many who live in open defiance of all the laws of justice, succeed in wicked practices; and we do not see them reckone with in this world. He notices those that do wrong under pretence of law and authority; and robbers, those that do wrong by force. He says "God layeth not folly to them;" that is, he does not at once send his judgments, nor make them examples, and so manifest their folly to all the world. But he that gets riches, and not by right, at his end shal be a fool, Jer 17:11.
Original Hebrew יטו5186 אביונים34 מדרך1870 יחד3162 חבאו2244 עניי6035 ארץ׃776
