TEXT [Commentary]

  G.   Job: A Challenge to Wisdom (12:1–14:22)

1.   Wisdom belongs to God alone (12:1-25)

1 Then Job spoke again:

2 “You people really know everything, don’t you?

And when you die, wisdom will die with you!

3 Well, I know a few things myself—

and you’re no better than I am.

Who doesn’t know these things you’ve been saying?

4 Yet my friends laugh at me,

for I call on God and expect an answer.

I am a just and blameless man,

yet they laugh at me.

5 People who are at ease mock those in trouble.

They give a push to people who are stumbling.

6 But robbers are left in peace,

and those who provoke God live in safety—

though God keeps them in his power.[*]

7 “Just ask the animals, and they will teach you.

Ask the birds of the sky, and they will tell you.

8 Speak to the earth, and it will instruct you.

Let the fish in the sea speak to you.

9 For they all know

that my disaster[*] has come from the hand of the LORD.

10 For the life of every living thing is in his hand,

and the breath of every human being.

11 The ear tests the words it hears

just as the mouth distinguishes between foods.

12 Wisdom belongs to the aged,

and understanding to the old.

13 “But true wisdom and power are found in God;

counsel and understanding are his.

14 What he destroys cannot be rebuilt.

When he puts someone in prison, there is no escape.

15 If he holds back the rain, the earth becomes a desert.

If he releases the waters, they flood the earth.

16 Yes, strength and wisdom are his;

deceivers and deceived are both in his power.

17 He leads counselors away, stripped of good judgment;

wise judges become fools.

18 He removes the royal robe of kings.

They are led away with ropes around their waist.

19 He leads priests away, stripped of status;

he overthrows those with long years in power.

20 He silences the trusted adviser

and removes the insight of the elders.

21 He pours disgrace upon princes

and disarms the strong.

22 “He uncovers mysteries hidden in darkness;

he brings light to the deepest gloom.

23 He builds up nations, and he destroys them.

He expands nations, and he abandons them.

24 He strips kings of understanding

and leaves them wandering in a pathless wasteland.

25 They grope in the darkness without a light.

He makes them stagger like drunkards.

NOTES

12:2 You people really know everything. The syntax of this verse has generated much discussion concerning the meaning of the Heb. word “people” (‘am [TH5971A, ZH6639]), which must in some sense be applied to the wise. The word is defined in the second line by a paratactic relationship. Supplying the usual conjunctions, it would say “you are the people with whom wisdom will die.” The cryptic line arrangement makes the poetry very forceful.

12:3 no better than I. Lit. “I am not inferior to you.” “Not inferior” is litotes for saying that something is actually superior. Job does not view his friends’ statements as any terrific revelation.

12:5 give a push. This is the correct translation of nakon [TH5221A, ZH5787], which is derived from the word for “strike” (nakah [TH5221, ZH5782]). The translations along the lines of “it is ready” (ASV, NASB, RSV, NRSV) mistakenly relate nakon to the word prepare (kun [TH3559, ZH3922]). The translation “he that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp” (KJV) is a further misunderstanding of the word lappid [TH3940, ZH4365] in the first line, which is a prepositional form of the noun pid [TH6365, ZH7085] (misfortune) and not the word for “torch” (lappid).

12:6 God keeps them in his power. This translation is to be preferred over the many variations found in other translations: God gives abundantly into their hand (cf. KJV, ASV); those whom God brings under the power (control) of the violent (cf. NASB); those who bring their god (i.e., idol) in hand (cf. RSV, NRSV, NIV). All of these translations assume that the “hand” is that of those who provoke God yet still appear to be blessed by God. In Hebrew, “hand” is a common way of referring to power; however, the last line of the verse does not say that God prospers the robbers (12:6a) by giving into their hand but rather that God has them in his hand. This may be taken in a concessive sense (God does nothing, even though he obviously could) or in a causative sense (they are secure because God has them in his power).

12:7 ask the animals. These next two verses appear to be a wisdom proverb quoted by Job. Job’s response to the proverb comes in 12:9 with a rhetorical question, “Who does not know this?” (cf. NLT: “For they all know”). Job used the proverb to refute the traditional arguments of the friends. Job accepted the mysteries of nature as evidence for wisdom; what he rejected was the sweeping conclusions of traditional wisdom, especially as his friends had applied it to him.

12:8 the earth. “Plants of the earth” (RSV, NRSV) reads the noun siakh [TH7880, ZH8489] (shrub) instead of the verb siakh [TH7878, ZH8488] (consider), in the interest of making a better parallel to animals, birds, and fish (12:7-8).

12:9 they all know. The application of the proverb would suggest it is the wise who are the subject: “who does not know through all these things?” Nature was an important means of understanding the divine order of the universe.

the LORD. This is the only use of the divine name (Yahweh) outside of the prologue and the God speeches. This is probably because this line is quoted from Isa 41:20c.

12:12 Wisdom belongs to the aged. This verse is sometimes translated as an interrogative (NIV, NRSV) meant to challenge tradition (cf. 8:8-10) since it is hardly Job’s own opinion, but this is unwarranted; Job is quoting another wisdom proverb (cf. 12:7), which he will refute. The translation of “aged” (yashish [TH3453, ZH3813]) as “the Old One” and “those of many years” as “the Long Lived” (Blommerde 1969:62-63) is not only a false application of epithets for God (Ugaritic and Heb.) but also an inadequate attempt to understand the verse.

12:13 true wisdom and power. Using the vocabulary of Isa 11:2, Job begins his argument that true wisdom belongs to God alone. His use of Scripture to point out the inadequacy of human wisdom serves as a rebuttal to the claims of wisdom.

12:15 flood the earth. This negative view of rain (contrast Eliphaz in 5:10) as “ravaging” the land describes the effects of flooding (erosion and destruction of buildings).

12:16 strength and wisdom. This verse has synonymous terms to 12:13; the word wisdom (khokmah [TH2451, ZH2683]) of 12:13 is replaced here by “understanding” (tushiyah [TH8454, ZH9370]; cf. 11:6 and the discussion there).

deceivers and deceived are both in his power. This is a merism in which opposites indicate totality; this description of all humanity expresses Job’s negative view of God’s power.

12:17 stripped of good judgment. The meaning barefoot (NASB) assumes that the word sholal [TH7758, ZH8768] comes from the root nashal [TH5394, ZH5970] (draw off), sometimes used with reference to the shoe (Koehler and Baumgartner 4:1338). More likely, sholal is related to the verb shalal [TH7997A, ZH8964] (strip away), usually used in the sense of plunder; from this comes the noun “booty” (shalal [TH7998, ZH8965]). In Mic 1:8 (the only occurrence of sholal outside of Job 12:17, 19), the adjective is a synonym with “naked” (‘arom [TH6174, ZH6873]). Rather than the meaning “barefoot,” it should have the sense of “stripped” (RSV, NRSV, NIV). In Job, the metaphor must be inferred from the manner in which the adjective “stripped” (sholal) modifies its referent (Gordis 1978:139). In 12:17, counselors are stripped of sense, and in v. 19 priests are stripped of their ordination. The translation “behave like idiots” (NEB) for both verses fails to understand the metaphor.

12:18 with ropes around their waist. The verse might imply that defeated kings are led away into captivity (Clines 1989:300), but the Heb. speaks only of the divesture of royal clothing, which is replaced by rudimentary garments.

12:19 he overthrows those with long years in power. This line must refer to the priests named in the first line. The Heb. refers to the perpetuity (’ethanim [TH386, ZH419]) of their ordained status; “the renderings mighty, strong, strength are in reality only guesses” (Driver and Gray 1921:2.79). God “overthrows those long in office” (REB; cf. NIV).

12:21 disarms the strong. The metaphor in Heb. is clear: to “loose the belt” is to disable or “disarm” a soldier (e.g., Isa 5:27). “Belt” (maziakh [TH4206B, ZH4653]) is an Egyptian loanword also known in Akkadian (Koehler and Baumgartner 2:535). The meaning “strong” for the root ’apaq is known in both Heb. and Akkadian (epequ). Cf. NIDOTTE 1:479.

12:23 He expands nations. The verb shatakh [TH7849, ZH8848] (scatter, spread about) may have the negative sense of dispersing and destroying nations (Reider 1954:290-291).

and he abandons them. The MT says he “leads them” (wayyankhem). This is often taken in a negative sense (he leads them away), but the verb nakhah [TH5148, ZH5697] is never used negatively. The word may be related to the root nuakh [TH5117, ZH5663] (rest) which can mean “put down, leave” (vocalized as wayyannikhem), but when used of nations it means “to leave” in a good sense. Rather than synonymous parallelism with the first line (as the NLT implies), the second line is more logically antithetic to the first (Blommerde 1969:64); sometimes God disperses nations and then leads them to order (or gives them peace)— i.e., they go from ruins to greatness.

COMMENTARY [Text]

This section begins Job’s longest speech (12:1–14:22) outside of his concluding monologue. It is connected by some scholars to the second cycle of speeches (Fohrer 1989:232), but others take it as the conclusion to the first cycle (e.g., Gordis 1978:127). It functions as a transition between the two cycles, serving as a reply to the friends collectively and as cause for further discussion (Clines 1989:285). The poet has formally structured his thoughts as a dialog of speech-response but not in a rigid symmetric pattern of argument-response. This is not a formal debate with equal time for all, as a glance at the chapter lengths makes clear, nor does each response necessarily relate to the speech immediately preceding it. Though Zophar may be picking up on particular aspects of the preceding speech of Job, as noted above, for the most part the debate is carried on only in general principle in the formal dialog. Job addresses God as much as the friends because, for him, God is the real antagonist. The friends are only witnesses of this controversy, so they have a somewhat subsidiary role in the Job speeches.[21]

This long speech of Job breaks down into two main sections; in the first Job addresses the friends (12:1–13:19), and in the second Job addresses God (13:20–14:22). The main point that Job makes in response to the friends is that true wisdom belongs to God alone, so even wise mortals cannot pretend to know what God is doing. This may, in part, be a direct challenge to Zophar who speaks of the mysteries of wisdom (11:7-9). If Zophar was right, he should stop passing judgment on Job, for he didn’t know any better than Job what God was doing. The argument that wisdom is mysterious supports the case for Job, not against him, for what wisdom anyone truly does have is only partial and insufficient to defend God to a suffering man. This then led Job to address his true antagonist, the silent sovereign of the realms of earth and heaven. Job could only plead for mercy and lament his helplessness.

In this section, Job begins his address with biting sarcasm against his friends. His statement is not a characterization of the friends so much as a criticism of the mentality that they represent. It is particularly ironic to say that wisdom will die, because the very basis of wisdom was in passing its traditions and teachings on from the oldest living member of a generation to those who would carry it forward (8:8). This irony is particularly poignant for those who regard themselves as the very embodiment of wisdom; if they are the only ones truly wise, then wisdom must die with them. Job’s friends would have recognized the implications of such arrogant presumption. Whatever their opinions of themselves as the true bearers of wisdom, they were wrong. Zophar had called Job an empty-headed person (11:12) who needed to “get some intelligence”; Job would remind Zophar that his intelligence was not in any sense inferior to any other (see note on 12:3). The perspective of wisdom presented by Job’s friends so far was, in reality, common knowledge. Job knew some things the friends did not know, but since they didn’t know that they didn’t know, they were unwilling to listen. The friends are all too typically representative of some who presume to dispense knowledge and wisdom for other people.

Job’s friends’ ignorance had a negative impact. Though his friends may not have actually derided him, he had become vulnerable to their scorn, for they held him guilty and unrepentant. They could not see the real Job. He was a person whose integrity was uncompromised, a person who should have been able to laugh at the calamity that was coming upon the wicked. Instead, he had become a laughingstock to his friends. Job is not alone in history in this predicament. The Psalms frequently lament the case of an innocent person being mocked by enemies. The high priest Pashhur threw the prophet Jeremiah into the stocks for preaching the truth of God’s judgment, so the prophet felt deceived by God for being made a laughingstock (Jer 20:7-8). Though the enemies of Jeremiah were religious leaders, they obviously were enemies. Job’s detractors professed to be godly friends. They told him he should call out to God. Job could and did call out to God; that was not the problem. The problem was the inadequate wisdom of these friends who thought that simple, immediate retribution is somehow the sum total of justice, that it is the very foundation of the divine order, and therefore the basis for all application of wisdom. With their rhetoric they made Job into a proverbial example of self-righteousness under judgment. These friends rewarded calamity with derision; they kicked their friend while he was down. Job could only lament this supreme injustice. He imagined that those who do not have his innocence, even those who are violent plunderers and provoke God, were safe and secure in their homes. This is true even though they, as well, were fully under God’s control. If God was not actively protecting them, he was certainly allowing them to continue in their violent ways, and no one was laughing at them. Some admire them, others fear them, but no one saw them so humiliated as a just and righteous man like Job was.

Job challenged the sort of wisdom that can justify such a situation by quoting the arguments of wisdom itself. Wisdom typically drew its advice from the realm of nature; by analogy, the same rules applied to the human sphere. If you wish to know about male and female relations, consider the snake, the eagle, and the ship (Prov 30:18-20); if you wish to know about work and success, consider the ant, the coney, the grasshopper, or the lizard (Prov 30:24-28). Wisdom is to be found in all realms of nature as everyone knows, said Job (12:7-9). Then, somewhat bitterly, he responded with a prophetic line found in Isaiah 41:20. The prophet could triumphantly proclaim a new redemption, a second journey through the vast wilderness, a return to the Promised Land, because both the desert and the Babylonian powers were fully under the control of their creator. Job knew all about such deliverance and all about the divine control of all life (12:10). Job, however, knew that there is another side to the activity of God within the created order. This knowledge is critical to true wisdom, and here his friends were particularly deficient.

The assumption of the wise was that they were capable of fully understanding the natural order and therefore God’s activity within it. You can understand food through tasting it, so also you can evaluate wisdom by hearing it. This is another platitude of wisdom that Job had been taught long ago. Further, such knowledge derived from observation and experience was by no means limited to one individual or even one generation. Those who have barely begun to live, said Eliphaz (8:9), should not begin to pass judgment on all these things. Wisdom is with the aged (12:12). The aged represent the distillation of truth, not just of each one’s own lifetime, nor only of their collective lifetimes, but of all the generations that have preceded them. This is another of those great wisdom truths Job had been taught all too well. For Job, this great truth of wisdom, which he quoted, is also its Achilles heel. If no human can understand all the workings of God in creation, then some of that working remains a mystery to all humans. Collecting what humans can know over generations is still only pooling human ignorance. Job responded to this claim by repeating a phrase that opens and closes the main point: only God has wisdom and strength (12:13, 16), and only God can provide true counsel and understanding. Job expressed this particular observation in the vocabulary of the prophet Isaiah, so that its validity could not be questioned. The prophet spoke of the one who has the spirit of wisdom, strength, counsel, and understanding (Isa 11:1-2), who will bring about the restoration of the divine order. This is the one who would restore peace to the garden, who would bring the wolf and the lamb together, the calf and the lion, even the child and the snake (Isa 11:6-8). This is wisdom and power, but this is not ordinary human wisdom and power. The only way humans can get a lion and a lamb to cohabit is to provide a new lamb every day.

Though such conflict within what we euphemistically call the “balance of nature” may cause a certain amount of dismay among some environmentalists, it was no problem for ancient wisdom. Violence in the natural world was not particularly Job’s problem, but this conflict was a symptom of that violence that also extends into the human realm and directly affects people. What God tears down is not rebuilt; God imprisons and there is no freedom (12:14). These destructive actions might be the work of humans themselves, acting as their own worst enemy. Even so, that is still a problem for Job because God does not intervene against the wicked. However, the natural order, which is completely outside of human control, is no kinder toward humans. If there is no rain, there is drought, and then if the rain does come it ravages the land, overturning the earth and everything built upon it. Again, Job emphasized, this happens indiscriminately; both the deceivers and the deceived are affected the same way. The theology of retribution has not explained this problem; their experience has not come to terms with it—the wise and aged are dumbfounded. In the end, we must admit that understanding and strength are found only with God. Wisdom can be wise only in so far as it knows its limits. When wisdom pontificates on what it cannot understand, it mocks the innocent.

Job focused on the destructive side of God’s activity. Job systematically reviewed the various levels and function of social order, and he found them all to be askew. Fundamental to the poetic author was the role of the wise in maintaining good order—especially those who served as counselors to kings, the kings themselves, and the priests who represent an eternal order to maintain the divine covenant. Job used the word “stripped” to describe counselors and priests. They simply were not what they are supposed to be. Political advisers end up being stripped of sense (i.e., completely mad), and priests are stripped of status (i.e., the perpetual order is simply brought to an end). This latter observation may be an oblique acknowledgement of the fact that in the days of the author of the book of Job, the Temple had been razed to the ground and its officials taken into exile. If that is the case, it also provides a national historical circumstance for the observation that kings were divested of their royal robes and instead had only the most basic garments or, even worse, had their royal sash replaced with a rope by which they were led into exile. Even the elders lost their sagacity; scorn came upon the nobles, and the soldiers were disarmed. One cannot help but feel here the kind of situation described in Isaiah 3:1-7, where God removed all leadership and support from his people, where the chiefs were children, where the fools mocked the wise, where everyone fought their neighbor, where not even the lowliest individual assumed responsibility for the ruin that had taken place. Such was the society Job observed.

The poetic author, through Job’s character, again made his point by expressing himself in terms of Scripture. His phrase concerning the shame heaped on nobles is derived from Psalm 107:40a. He concluded his thoughts on the decay of human society by saying that leaders of the land were robbed of reason and were left to wander in the trackless wasteland (12:24). The last half of that verse is also derived from Psalm 107:40. Job said that God unveils the deep secrets of darkness, that he brings light to the deepest gloom (12:22). This is expressed in the words of Psalm 107:10a and 14a. Those imprisoned and in gloom were the ones who defied God, but then they cried out to him and were delivered (Ps 107:10-14). In the psalm, it is the enemy princes who were shamed and led into a trackless wilderness in order to bring redemption for those humiliated. Job, however, did not see these things in simple redemptive terms. When society falls into disorder, everyone suffers; it does not result in the deliverance of the afflicted. Why should nobles be shamed and soldiers disarmed? These seem to be part of the dark secrets of God’s own order, the ominous aspects of the providence of the Creator. Those who sit in prison in darkness are there because they are within God’s power, and they are helpless whatever their guilt or innocence. Sometimes God raises up nations then destroys them; sometimes he scatters nations and then leads them back into power. The whole progression of human government is an inexplicable madness; it is a wandering in the wilderness with no path. Humans are simply left to grope in the darkness; they stagger like a drunk with no more hope of obtaining sense than someone intoxicated. As the drunk sees the horizons sway, so they sway for Job, and there is nothing wisdom can say to bring hope to the situation.