Job 24:2

2. Some remove the landmarks The violence of Job’s emotion is marked by his omission of the subject the wicked. In times when landmarks were the sole evidence of the limits of land, their removal was deemed an outrage so gross that under Numa it was punished with death. See also Deuteronomy 19:14; Deuteronomy 27:17. On a land boundary stone of the time of Merodach-Baladan I., about B.C. 1300, is the following inscription: “If a ruler, or eunuch, or a citizen, the memorial stone of this ground takes and destroys, in a place where it cannot be seen to anywhere shall place it in, and this stone tablet if a naka, or a brother, or a katu, or an evil one, or an enemy, or any other person, or the son of the owner of this land, shall act falsely, and shall destroy it, into the water or into the fire shall throw it, with a stone shall break it, from the hand of Maraduk-zakirizkur, (the grantee,) and his seed shall take it away, and above or below shall send it; the gods, Ann, Bel, and Hea, Ninip and Gula, these lords and all the gods on this stone tablet whose emblems are seen, violently may they destroy his name. A curse unmitigated may they curse over him. Calamity may they bring upon him. May his seed be swept away in evil, and not in good; and in the day of departing of life may he expire, and Shamas and Merodach tear him asunder, and may none mourn for him!” GEORGE SMITH, Assyrian Discov., 24:236-241.

And feed thereof The same strong arm of violence that seized upon the flocks of the helpless, shamelessly feeds them in public view. It is supposed by some that Job, in this sad description of the poor and defenceless, (2-8,) had in mind the aboriginal people of his native land, the Horites, dwellers of Mount Seir, who had been dispossessed of their all, reduced to the grossest vassalage, and finally exterminated by the Edomites. Every land has had a like history of outrage and wrong.