Job 24:11
Which make oil within their walls, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst.
Which make oil within their walls,.... Not the poor within their own walls; as if the sense was, that they made their oil in a private manner within the walls of their houses, or in their cellars, lest it should be known and taken away from them; for such cannot be thought to have had oliveyards to make oil of; rather within the walls of their rich masters, where they were kept closely confined to their work, as if in a prison; or within the walls and fences of their oliveyards, where their olive presses stood; or best of all "within the rows {q} of their olive trees", as the word signifies, where having gathered the olives, they pressed out the oil in the presses and this they did at noon, in the heat of the day, as the word {r} for making oil is observed by some to signify, and yet had nothing given them to quench their thirst, as follows:
and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst; after having gathered their grapes from their vines for them, they trod them in the winepresses, and made their wine, and yet would not allow them to drink of it to allay their thirst.
{q} Mtrwv Nyb "inter ordines", Mercerus, Piscator, Cocceius; so Sephorno, and some in Eliae Tishbi, p. 241.
{r} wryhuy "meridiati sunt", V. L. so Bolducius, Schultens.