“Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out: yet God layeth not folly to them.”
From the city the dying groan, and the soul of the wounded cries out; yet God does not account it as wrong, transitioning from the catalog of injustice to the theological problem: the visibility of suffering combined with divine apparent indifference. The groaning of the dying and the crying out of the wounded represent the anguished response of humans to their condition, suffering that should provoke divine response if God's nature is just. Yet the assertion that God does not account it as wrong—does not register it as a moral problem requiring divine response—becomes the crux of Job's complaint: divine omniscience does not result in divine justice. This verse transforms Job's social critique into a fundamental theological challenge to divine character.
Church Fathers on Job 24:12
Neither have I gone back from the commandments of His lips. 43. As servants that serve well are ever intent upon their masters’ countenances, that the things they may bid they may hear readily, and strive to fulfil; so the minds of the righteous in their bent are upon Almighty God, and in His Scripture they as it were fix their eyes on His face, that whereas God delivers therein all that He wills, they may not be at variance with His will, in proportion as they learn that…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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