Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary Verse 5. Rising betimes for a prey ] The general sense here seems plain enough. There are some who live a lawless roaming life: make a predatory life their employment; for this purpose, frequent the wilderness, where they seize on and appropriate whatsoever they find, and by this method they and their families are supported. Mr. Good says: "The sense has never yet been understood by any commentator;" and hence he proposes a different division of the words, placing hbr[ arabah, the desert or wilderness, in the first hemistich, thus: - "Rising early for the pillage of the wilderness; The bread of themselves and of their children." Others think that the words are spoken solely of the poor under the hand of oppression, who are driven away from their homes, and obliged to seek such support as the wilderness can afford. Such was originally the state of the Bedouins, and of the wandering Arab hordes in general: the oppression of the tyrannous governors obliged them to seek refuge in the deserts, where they still live in a roaming predatory life.
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 הן2005 פראים6501 במדבר4057 יצאו3318 בפעלם6467 משׁחרי7836 לטרף2964 ערבה6160 לו לחם3899 לנערים׃5288
