Job 12

Job Rebukes His Friends and Praises Divine Power

7 passages

Overview

Firing back at his friends with sharp irony, Job asserts that he possesses wisdom equal to theirs, calls on animals, birds, and the earth itself as witnesses to God's sovereign dominion, and unfolds a hymn declaring that all true wisdom and power belong to God alone — who overturns kings, silences counselors, humbles nations, and whose decrees no human hand can reverse.

Passages

1–3Job Asserts His Equal Wisdom Against the Friends 4–6The Mockery of the Righteous and the Prosperity of the Wicked 7–11Creation Itself Testifies to God's Sovereign Hand 12–13True Wisdom and Might Belong to God Alone 14–16The Unbreakable Hand: God's Sovereign Power and Wisdom 17–21God Overturns the Power of Rulers, Priests, and Nobles 22–25God Governs History, Humbling Nations and Their Leaders

Study Resources

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Job 12

¹Then Job answered,

²“No doubt, but you are the people, and wisdom will die with you.

³But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Yes, who doesn’t know such things as these?

⁴I am like one who is a joke to his neighbor, I, who called on God, and he answered. The just, the blameless man is a joke.

⁵In the thought of him who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune. It is ready for them whose foot slips.

⁶The tents of robbers prosper. Those who provoke God are secure, who carry their god in their hands.

⁷“But ask the animals now, and they will teach you; the birds of the sky, and they will tell you.

⁸Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you. The fish of the sea will declare to you.

⁹Who doesn’t know that in all these, Yahweh’s hand has done this,

¹⁰in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?

¹¹Doesn’t the ear try words, even as the palate tastes its food?

¹²With aged men is wisdom, in length of days understanding.

¹³“With God is wisdom and might. He has counsel and understanding.

¹⁴Behold, he breaks down, and it can’t be built again. He imprisons a man, and there can be no release.

¹⁵Behold, he withholds the waters, and they dry up. Again, he sends them out, and they overturn the earth.

¹⁶With him is strength and wisdom. The deceived and the deceiver are his.

¹⁷He leads counselors away stripped. He makes judges fools.

¹⁸He loosens the bond of kings. He binds their waist with a belt.

¹⁹He leads priests away stripped, and overthrows the mighty.

²⁰He removes the speech of those who are trusted, and takes away the understanding of the elders.

²¹He pours contempt on princes, and loosens the belt of the strong.

²²He uncovers deep things out of darkness, and brings out to light the shadow of death.

²³He increases the nations, and he destroys them. He enlarges the nations, and he leads them captive.

²⁴He takes away understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth, and causes them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.

²⁵They grope in the dark without light. He makes them stagger like a drunken man.

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