Job’s reply to Zophar
12
And Job answered and said, 2 📚“No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you!
3 📚But I have understanding as well as you. I am not inferior to you; yes, who does not know such things as these?
12:2-3 Now Job has heard each of his three friends speak and this is the way things seem to him: his friends are professing a great wisdom but what they say is very ordinary; they try to advise him from a superior position but are unable to say a single thing he doesn’t already know, and they cannot get to the root of his problem. So he speaks these words in a very sarcastic manner. If we counsel others let us do it in such a way that we will not provoke a similar response.⚜
4 📚“I am like someone mocked by his neighbours, one who called on God, and he answered him. The just upright man is laughed to scorn.
12:4 Job means that it has been his custom to pray and that God has sent answers to his prayers (though God is silent now).⚜
5 📚Someone at ease regards a lamp with contempt, as made ready for one whose feet slip.
12:5 Job’s friends are not suffering, have experienced no calamities. It is easy, he says, for them to look with contempt on him. No one who has not been through something of what Job suffered can possibly understand him. Compare 2 Cor 1:3-7.⚜
6 📚The tents of robbers prosper, and those who provoke God are secure in what God brings into their hands.
7 📚“But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
8 Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare it to you.
9 📚Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?
10 📚In his hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.
11 📚Does not the ear test words, and the mouth taste its food?
12 📚With the aged is wisdom, and in length of days is understanding.
12:7-12 Job returns to the thoughts of vs 2,3. He thinks his friends, though they are old, have still much to learn and that nature could teach them. Compare Ps 19:1-4.⚜
13 📚“With him is wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding.
14 📚See, he breaks down, and it cannot be rebuilt. He imprisons a man, and there can be no release.
15 📚See, he withholds water, and the streams dry up; and he sends them out, and they overwhelm the earth.
16 📚With him are strength and wisdom. The deceived and the deceiver are his.
17 📚He leads counsellors away plundered, and makes fools of judges.
18 📚He loosens the bonds of kings, and ties up their waist with a belt.
19 📚He leads princes away plundered, and overthrows the mighty.
20 📚He deprives the trusted ones of speech, and takes away the understanding of the aged.
21 📚He pours contempt on princes, and weakens the strength of the mighty.
22 📚He reveals the deep things of darkness, and brings the shadow of death to the light.
23 📚He increases the nations, and destroys them. He enlarges nations, and guides them.
24 📚He takes away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causes them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.
25 📚They grope in the dark without light, and he makes them stagger like a drunkard.
12:13-25 He now shows them that he knows as much about God’s wisdom and power as they do. He believes, even as they do, that God is supremely wise, is the absolute sovereign ruler in all the affairs of men. (Compare Ps 33:10-11; 47:2; 115:3; 135:6; Dan 4:34-35.)⚜