The World Turned Upside Down Text: Job 24:13-17
Introduction: The Allergic Reaction to Light
There are two kinds of people in this world, and only two. There are those who walk in the light, as He is in the light. And there are those who run from the light, who despise the light, and who make the deep darkness their trusted confederate. This is not a matter of personality types or sociological conditioning. This is the great antithesis, the fundamental divide that runs through the heart of all humanity. It is the war between two worldviews, two ways of life, two allegiances. One bows to the Creator of light, and the other makes a covenant with the shadows.
In our passage today, Job, in the midst of his profound suffering, is wrestling with the apparent prosperity of the wicked. He is describing a certain kind of man, a man who has made a calculated, deliberate decision to invert the created order. God said, "Let there be light," and called it good. This man says, "Let there be darkness," and calls it his opportunity. God established the rhythm of day for work and night for rest. This man makes the day his time for hiding and the night his time for prowling. He is not simply a sinner who stumbles; he is a rebel who enlists. He is a partisan of the dark.
We live in a culture that is increasingly populated by such men. Our civilization is engaged in a frantic project to unscrew the sun from its socket. We are told that darkness is enlightenment, that moral clarity is bigotry, and that the firm boundaries established by God are oppressive. We are told to call evil good and good evil, to put darkness for light and light for darkness. This is not a new rebellion. It is as old as the Garden, but it has put on a modern, sophisticated suit. Job's description of the murderer, the adulterer, and the thief is not simply a portrait of ancient criminals. It is a diagnostic of the unregenerate human heart in any age. It is a worldview analysis. And we must understand this worldview if we are to understand the world we are called to win for Christ.
The Text
“Others have been with those who rebel against the light;
They do not want to recognize its ways
Nor abide in its paths.
The murderer arises at dawn;
He kills the afflicted and the needy,
And at night he is as a thief.
The eye of the adulterer keeps watch for the twilight,
Saying, ‘No eye will see me.’
And he keeps his face hidden.
In the dark they dig into houses;
They shut themselves up by day;
They do not know the light.
For the morning is the same to him as the shadow of death,
For he recognizes the terrors of the shadow of death."
(Job 24:13-17 LSB)
The Foundational Rebellion (v. 13)
Job begins by identifying the root of the problem. It is not a series of isolated sins, but a foundational posture of rebellion.
"Others have been with those who rebel against the light; They do not want to recognize its ways Nor abide in its paths." (Job 24:13)
The first thing to notice is the active nature of this rebellion. These are men who "rebel against the light." Light, in Scripture, is a synonym for God's truth, His righteousness, His holiness, and His very presence. "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). Therefore, to rebel against the light is to rebel against God Himself. This is not a passive ignorance; it is an active, willful insurrection. The Lord Jesus diagnosed this condition perfectly: "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil" (John 3:19). They do not lack evidence; they hate the evidence.
Job says they "do not want to recognize its ways." The problem is volitional, not intellectual. The light reveals. It exposes. It shows things for what they are. And the man who is determined to sin does not want his deeds exposed. He prefers the flattering darkness where he can pretend he is sovereign. To recognize the ways of the light would be to recognize God's law, God's standards, God's claims on his life. It would mean bending the knee, and the rebel is pathologically committed to keeping his knees straight.
Consequently, they do not "abide in its paths." The path of light is the path of righteousness, of wisdom, of life (Prov. 4:18). But these men have chosen another road. They have chosen the broad way that leads to destruction. This is the essence of a worldview commitment. They have chosen their path, and it is a path that requires the absence of God's light. All the particular sins that follow are simply the logical outworking of this initial, foundational choice to declare war on the day.
The Inverted Man: Murderer, Adulterer, Thief (v. 14-16)
Job then provides three case studies of this rebellion, three portraits of the man who loves the dark.
"The murderer arises at dawn; He kills the afflicted and the needy, And at night he is as a thief. The eye of the adulterer keeps watch for the twilight, Saying, ‘No eye will see me.’ And he keeps his face hidden. In the dark they dig into houses; They shut themselves up by day; They do not know the light." (Job 24:14-16 LSB)
First, the murderer. He rises "at dawn," or as some translations have it, "before the light." He uses the last vestiges of darkness to get into position. His work is destroying the image of God, and such work cannot be done in the bright noon of accountability. He targets the "afflicted and the needy," the vulnerable, because his worldview is that of the predator. At night, his work continues as a thief. He is a man who lives by violence and stealth, and both require the shadows.
Second, the adulterer. His "eye... keeps watch for the twilight." He is a creature of the dusk. His great hope is anonymity: "No eye will see me." His entire enterprise is built on deceit, and deceit wilts in the sunlight. He hides his face, not just from his neighbor and his cuckolded victim, but fundamentally from God. He is playing a child's game, thinking that if he covers his face, the Almighty cannot see him. But this is the self-deception that darkness breeds. Adultery is a sin that attacks the very covenant structure of society, the one-flesh union that images Christ and the Church. It is an act of profound social vandalism, and so it must be done under the cover of night.
Third, the housebreaker, the burglar. "In the dark they dig into houses." They violate the sanctity of the home, the place of rest and security. But notice the corresponding action: "They shut themselves up by day." This is the key to their entire psychology. They are men who have inverted God's order. The day, which God made for dominion, work, and fellowship, is for them a time of confinement and hiding. The night, which God made for rest, is their time for labor. They are fundamentally out of sync with the rhythm of creation. Why? The text is explicit: "They do not know the light." This is not to say they have never seen the sun. It means they have no acquaintance, no fellowship, no love for the moral and spiritual reality that the light represents.
The Terror of the Morning (v. 17)
The final verse is the capstone, revealing the psychological state of the man who has made darkness his friend.
"For the morning is the same to him as the shadow of death, For he recognizes the terrors of the shadow of death." (Job 24:17 LSB)
This is a staggering reversal. The morning, which for the righteous is a picture of God's mercies, which are new every morning (Lam. 3:23), is for the wicked man a source of absolute terror. The sunrise is his enemy. The light of dawn is to him what the "shadow of death" is to a normal man. The shadow of death, the tsalmaweth, is a place of deep gloom, dread, and ultimate peril. For the rebel, the morning light brings precisely this kind of terror. Why?
Because the light means exposure. It means accountability. It means the end of his prowling, the end of his illicit freedom. The light threatens to reveal him for what he is. He has become so accustomed to the darkness, so friendly with it, that the approach of truth feels like an existential threat. He "recognizes the terrors of the shadow of death" because he has made himself a creature of that realm. He has allied himself with death, and so the approach of light, which is the symbol of life, feels like an invasion.
This is the ultimate end of all rebellion against God's created order. When you invert God's world, you do not become free; you become a terrified slave to the darkness. You begin by thinking the darkness serves you, and you end with the dawning realization that you serve it. The thing you thought was your refuge becomes your prison, and the thing that God gave as a blessing, the morning light, becomes your deepest dread.
Conclusion: Fleeing to the True Light
Job is describing the worldview of the ungodly, but in doing so, he is also, by implication, showing us the nature of salvation. If the essence of sin is to rebel against the light, then the essence of salvation is to be brought out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).
The man described by Job is a picture of every one of us in our natural state. We were born loving the darkness. Our hearts were adulterous, our hands were thieving, and our thoughts were murderous. We hid from God, and the dawning light of His holiness was a terror to our conscience. We were those who shut ourselves up by day, refusing to come to the light, lest our deeds should be exposed.
But then God, in an act of sheer, gratuitous grace, performed a great reversal. The true Light, the Lord Jesus Christ, entered our darkness. He came into the world, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. He endured the ultimate darkness on the cross, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He took the "shadow of death" upon Himself for us, so that we would no longer have to fear it.
And God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness in the first creation, is the same God who has "shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus" (2 Cor. 4:6). He does not ask us to find our way out of the dark. He invades our dark with His light. He does not ask the adulterer to reform himself before coming to the light; He calls him out of the twilight and into the day. He does not ask the thief to stop digging through houses; He gives him a new heart that no longer desires what belongs to another.
The choice before every person is the same one Job lays out. Will you be a rebel against the light, or a child of the light? Will the morning be your terror or your delight? Will you continue to make friends with the terrors of the darkness, or will you flee to the one who is the Light of the world, and who promises that whoever follows Him will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life?