Job 12 commentary

JOB 12 COMME TARY
EDITED BY GLE PEASE
Job
1 Then Job replied:
GILL, "And Job answered and said. In reply to Zophar, and in defence of himself;
what is recorded in this and the two following chapters.
HE RY 1-3, "The reproofs Job here gives to his friends, whether they were just or
no, were very sharp, and may serve for a rebuke to all that are proud and scornful, and
an exposure of their folly.
I. He upbraids them with their conceitedness of themselves, and the good opinion they
seemed to have of their own wisdom in comparison with him, than which nothing is
more weak and unbecoming, nor better deserves to be ridiculed, as it is here. 1. He
represents them as claiming the monopoly of wisdom, Job_12:2. He speaks ironically:
“No doubt you are the people; you think yourselves fit to dictate and give law to all
mankind, and your own judgment to be the standard by which every man's opinion must
be measured and tried, as if nobody could discern between truth and falsehood, good
and evil, but you only; and therefore every top-sail must lower to you, and, right or
wrong, we must all say as you say, and you three must be the people, the majority, to
have the casting vote.” Note, It is a very foolish and sinful thing for any to think
themselves wiser than all mankind besides, or to speak and act confidently and
imperiously, as if they thought so. Nay, he goes further: “You not only think there are
none, but that there will be none, as wise as you, and therefore that wisdom must die
with you, that all the world must be fools when you are gone, and in the dark when your
sun has set.” Note, It is folly for us to think that there will be any great irreparable loss of
us when we are gone, or that we can be ill spared, since God has the residue of the Spirit,
and can raise up others, more fit than we are, to do his work. When wise men and good
men die it is a comfort to think that wisdom and goodness shall not die with them. Some
think Job here reflects upon Zophar's comparing him (as he thought) and others to the
wild ass's colt, Job_11:12. “Yes,” says he, “we must be asses; you are the only men.” 2. He
does himself the justice to put in his claim as a sharer in the gifts of wisdom (Job_12:3):
“But I have understanding (a heart) as well as you; nay, I fall not lower than you;” as it
is in the margin. “I am as well able to judge of the methods and meanings of the divine
providence, and to construe the hard chapters of it, as you are.” He says not this to
magnify himself. It was no great applause of himself to say, I have understanding as
well as you; no, nor to say, “I understand this matter as well as you;” for what reason

had either he or they to be proud of understanding that which was obvious and level to
the capacity of the meanest? “Yea, who knows not such things as these? What things you
have said that are true are plain truths, and common themes, which there are many that
can talk as excellently of as either you or I.” But he says it to humble them, and check the
value they had for themselves as doctors of the chair. Note, (1.) It may justly keep us
from being proud of our knowledge to consider how many there are that know as much
as we do, and perhaps much more and to better purpose. (2.) When we are tempted to
be harsh in our censures of those we differ from and dispute with we ought to consider
that they also have understanding as well as we, a capacity of judging, and a right of
judging for themselves; nay, perhaps they are not inferior to us, but superior, and it is
possible that they may be in the right and we in the wrong; and therefore we ought not to
judge or despise them (Rom_14:3), nor pretend to be masters (Jam_3:1), while all we
are brethren, Mat_23:8. It is a very reasonable allowance to be made to all we converse
with, all we contend with, that they are rational creatures as well as we.
K&D 1-3, "The admission, which is strengthened by ‫י‬ ִⅴ ‫ם‬ָ‫נ‬ ְ‫מ‬ፎ, truly then (distinct from
‫ם‬ָ‫נ‬ ְ‫מ‬ፎ ‫י‬ ִⅴ, for truly, Job_36:4, similar to ‫י‬ ִⅴ ‫ה‬ֵ ִ‫,ה‬ behold indeed, Psa_128:4), is intended as
irony: ye are not merely single individuals, but the people = race of men (‫ם‬ ָ‫,ע‬ as Isa_40:7;
Isa_42:5), so that all human understanding is confined to you, and there is none other to
be found; and when once you die, it will seem to have died out. The lxx correctly renders:
µᆱ ᆓµεሏς ᅚστᆯ ᅎνθρωποι µόνοι (according to the reading of the Cod. Alex.); he also has a
heart like them, he is therefore not empty, ‫,נבוב‬ Job_11:12. Heart is, like Job_34:10,
comp. ‫,נלבב‬ Job_11:12, equivalent to νοሞς διάνοια; Ewald's translation, “I also have a head
even as you” (“brains” would better accord with the connection), is a western form of
expression, and modern and unbiblical (vid., Division ”Herz und Haupt,” Psychol. iv. §
12). He is not second to them; ‫ן‬ ִ‫מ‬ ‫ל‬ ַ‫פ‬ָ‫,נ‬ like Job_13:2, properly to slip from, to be below any
one; ‫ן‬ ִ‫מ‬ is not the comparative (Ewald). Oetinger's translation is not bad: I cannot slink
away at your presence. Who has not a knowledge of such things as those which they, by
setting themselves up as defenders of God, have presented to him! ‫י‬ ִ ִ‫א‬ ‫ה‬ָ‫י‬ ָ‫ה‬ is equivalent
to ‫י‬ ִ ְ‫ע‬ ַ‫ד‬ָ‫,י‬ σύνοιδα, Isa_59:12.
William Whedbee Pomona College, In the second and third cycles of speeches the
friends resort more and more to stereotyping as they indulge in long, lurid
portrayals of the grim destiny of the wicked (cf. chaps. 15, 18, 20, 22, 27:13ff.). In so
behaving the friends become increasingly ludicrous as they engage in an "infinity of
repetition." "Exaggeration," remarks Bergson, "is always comic when prolonged
and especially when prolonged" (quoted in Cox: 141). To put it another way: "In
ridiculing [they] become ridiculous" ¾which is a fundamental but paradoxical
ingredient of comedy. From the outset both Job and the reader¾albeit on different
levels of knowledge¾are keenly aware of the utter incongruity between the friends'
speeches and Job's situation. The friends become cruelly and grotesquely comic as
they strive with increasing dogmatism to apply their faulty solutions to the wrong
problem¾and the wrong person.
3.5 Job's sarcastic and satirical rejection of the friends and their irrelevant advice is

sharp and bitter, but not unmerited:
According to Roger Cox in a recent essay on comedy, Schopenhauer "classified
pedantry as a form of folly and says that 'the pedant, with his general maxims,
almost always misses the mark in life, shows himself to be foolish, awkward, and
useless!'" (137). In Schopenhauer's sense, Job's "comforters" may be termed
pedants, who though claiming to be wise in fact emerge as fools. Job's cutting retort
to his friends dramatizes this perception: "Your maxims are ashen
aphorisms/Defenses of clay are your defenses" (13:12). In his article Cox goes on to
argue that "moralizing leads toward incongruity for several reasons, not least of
which is the fact that it usually takes the form of universal statements. Obviously
universal statements gather so many things under a single heading that there is
almost bound to be incongruity among the things brought together under that
heading" (148). Cox ends his discussion with an observation that strikingly bears on
the Joban poet's parody of the wise comforter: "The pedant with his general
maxims is simply a caricature of the basic comic character, who strives
constantly...to justify and preserve his invented self against the onslaughts of the
realities he encounters"
BI 1-5, "But I have understanding as well as you.
The effect of the friends’ speeches upon Job
The whole world, Job feels, is against him, and he is left forlorn and solitary, unpitied in
his misery, unguided in his perplexity. And he may well feel so. All the religious thought
of his day, all the traditions of the past, all the wisdom of the patriarchal Church, if I may
use, as I surely may, the expression, is on one side. He, that solitary sufferer and
doubter, is on the other. And this is not all, or the worst. His own habits of thought, his
own training, are arrayed against him. He had been nursed, it is abundantly clear, in the
same creed as those who feel forced to play the part of his spiritual advisers. The new
and terrible experience of this crushing affliction, of this appalling visitation, falling
upon one who had passed his life in the devout service of God, strikes at the very
foundation of the faith on which that life, so peaceful, so pious, and so blessed, as it has
been put before us in the prologue to the tragedy, has been based and built up. All seems
against him; his friends, his God, his pains and anguish, his own tumultuous thoughts;
all but one voice within, which will not be silenced or coerced. How easy for him, had he
been reared in a heathen creed, to say, “My past life must have been a delusion; my
conscience has borne me false witness. I did justice, I loved mercy, I walked humbly with
my God. But I must in some way, I know not how, have offended a capricious and
arbitrary, but an all-powerful and remorseless Being. I will allow with you that that life
was all vitiated by some act of omission or of commission of which I know nothing. Him
therefore who has sent His furies to plague me, I will now try to propitiate.” But no! Job
will not come before his God, a God of righteousness, holiness, and truth, with a lie on
his lips. And so he now stands stubbornly at bay, and in this and the following two
chapters he bursts forth afresh with a strain of scorn and upbraiding that dies away into
despair, as he turns from his human tormentors, once his friends, to the God who seems,
like them, to have become his foe, but to whom he clings with an indomitable tenacity.
(Dean Bradley.)

Independency of thought in religion
Now in these verses Job asserts his moral manhood, he rises from the pressure of his
sufferings and the loads of sophistry and implied calumny which his friends had laid
upon his spirit, speaks out with the heart of a true man. We have an illustration of
independency of thought in religion, and this shall be our subject. A man though
crushed in every respect, like Job, should not surrender this.
I. From the capacity of the soul.
1. Man has a capacity to form conceptions of the cardinal principles of religion. He
can think of God, the soul, duty, moral obligation, Christ, immortality, etc.
2. Man has a capacity to realise the practical force of these conceptions. He can turn
them into emotions to fire his soul; he can embody—them as principles in his life.
II. From the despotism of corrupt religion. Corrupt religion, whether Pagan or
Christian, Papal or Protestant, always seeks to crush this independency in the individual
soul.
III. From the necessary means of personal religion. Religion in the soul begins in
individual thinking.
IV. From the conditions of moral usefulness. Every man is bound to be spiritually
useful, but he cannot be so without knowledge, and knowledge implies independent
study and conviction.
V. From the teachings of the Bible. The very existence of the Bible implies our power
and obligation in this matter.
VI. From the transactions of the judgment. In the great day of God men will have to give
an account of their thoughts and words as well as deeds. Let us, therefore, have the spirit
of Job, and when amongst bigots who seek to impose their views on us and override our
judgment, let us say, “No doubt ye are the people, end wisdom shall die with you; but I
have understanding as well as you.” (Homilist.)
BENSON, ". And Job answered — Greatly vexed that his friends should entertain so firm
an opinion of his being a wicked man, and that they should press him so hard with their
maxim, “that affliction was a demonstration of guilt,” he can no longer refrain from
answering them with great sharpness. He taxes them with self-conceit; their maxims he
treats as mean and poor, the contrary of which was evident to all observing persons;
good men were frequently in distress, while robbers and public plunderers enjoyed their
ill-gotten wealth in perfect security, Job 12:2-6. This was so notorious, that it was
impossible it could have escaped their observation, Job 12:7. This was indeed the work
of Jehovah, who was all-wise and all- powerful, and no one could call him to account. All
this he was as sensible of as they could be, for which reason he was the more desirous to
argue the point with God, Job 13:1-10. And, as for them, if they would pretend to be
judges, they should take great care to be upright ones; since God would by no means
excuse corruption of judgment, though it should be in his own behalf; and his all-seeing
eye would penetrate their motives, though ever so closely concealed from human view;
and in his sight all their maxims of wisdom, on which they seemed so much to value
themselves, would be regarded as dross and dung. That he was not in the least

apprehensive of bringing his cause to an issue; because he was satisfied that the
Almighty, far from oppressing him by dint of power, would rather afford him strength to
go through his defence; and he was persuaded the issue would be favourable to him, Job
12:11-19. He, therefore, challenges any one among them to declare himself the accuser;
secure enough as to that point, as he was sensible they could not make good their charge.
He again ends with a tender expostulation with the Almighty, begging he might have,
before his death, an opportunity of publicly vindicating his innocence, since afterward he
could have no hope of doing it, Job 12:20 to the end of chap. 14. — Heath.
COFFMAN, "JOB'S FOURTH SPEECH:
JOB ANSWERS NOT ONLY BILDAD BUT ALL OF HIS FRIENDS
This, along with the next two chapters is a record of Job's reply to his three friends.
Scherer pointed out that the chapter divisions here are fortunate, following the general
organization of Job's speech.[1] In this chapter, Job sarcastically rejected the theology of
his friends, appealing to a number of facts that clearly contradicted their views.
Job's bitterly sarcastic words here do not contradict the New Testament evaluation of
Job as a man of great patience. On the other hand, we should consider that, "The
measure of Job's provocation was so great that only a superhuman being could have
avoided being disgusted."[2]
As Franks noted, "Eliphaz had appealed to revelation (that vision which he said he had);
Bildad appealed to the wisdom of the ancients, and Zophar assumed that he himself was
the oracle of God's wisdom."[3] Job answered Zophar's conceited claim. However, Job,
in this speech, did not answer Zophar alone, but all of his `comforters.' He labeled all of
them as "forgers of lies" (Job 13:4), challenging them with his declaration that, "I am not
inferior to you (Job 12:3).
"And wisdom shall die with you" (Job 12:2). It is amazing that anyone could suppose
that these words were intended as a compliment; but Blair wrote, "Job gives them the
benefit of the doubt, saying, `Wisdom shall die with you.' He inferred that they were
wise."[4] We agree with Barnes that, "This is evidently the language of severe sarcasm;
and it shows a spirit fretted and chafed by their reproaches."[5]
"(For) him that is at ease, there is a contempt for misfortune" (Job 12:5). Job, who had
been the greatest man in the East, who had been the special object of God's blessings,
who had called upon God, and whom God had answered, - even that man, who, at the
moment, had been reduced by the most superlative misfortunes, was experiencing the
contemptuous laughter of his neighbors; and in these words he truly spoke of a universal
trait of our fallen human nature, namely, that of despising the unfortunate.

"In sheer exasperation, Job here bewails the situation. He knows that he is a godly man
of great wisdom and understanding; but here he is treated like a criminal and a
simpleton, solely upon the basis of his friends' theory, a theory that is flatly contradicted
by the fact that known robbers are prospering while he is reduced to mockery."[6]
In these words, Job is thoroughly contemptuous of the conceited and arrogant ignorance
of his `comforters'; and in this great response, he blistered them with devastating and
unanswerable criticisms.
"The tents of robbers prosper" (Job 12:6). This is the dramatic and unanswerable
contradiction of the false theory of his `comforters.' "This was Job's original
proposition; and he clung to it throughout the whole encounter, that God does not deal
with men in this life according to their character."[7]
COKE, "Job reproves the boasting of his friends: he shews that in this life it is frequently
well even with those men who offend the Lord; yet allows that nobody could deny their
general doctrine, that all things were governed by an Almighty God.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 12:1. And Job answered— In this and the two following chapters Job replies to
Zophar. Greatly vexed that his friends should entertain so firm an opinion of his being a
wicked man; that they should press him so hard with their maxim, "That affliction was a
demonstration of guilt," and should make a mock of his appeal to God, he can no longer
refrain from being very sharp in his treatment of them. He taxes them with self-conceit;
their maxims he treats as mean and poor, the contrary of which was evident to all
observing persons; good men were frequently in distress, while robbers and public
plunderers enjoyed their ill-gotten wealth in perfect security; Job 12:2-6. This was so
notorious, that it was impossible it could have escaped their observation; Job 12:7 to the
end. This was, indeed, the work of Jehovah, who was all-wise and all-powerful, and no
one could call him to account. All this he was as sensible of as they could be, for which
reason he was the more desirous to argue the point with God; Job 13:1-10. And as for
them, if they would pretend to be judges, they should take great care to be upright ones;
since God would by no means excuse corruption of judgment, though it should be in his
own behalf; and his all-seeing eye would penetrate their motives, though ever so closely
concealed from human view; and in his sight, all their maxims of wisdom, on which they
seemed so much to value themselves, would be regarded as dross and dung. He was not,
he intimated, in the least apprehensive of bringing his cause to an issue; because he was
satisfied that the Almighty, far from oppressing him by dint of power, would rather
afford him strength to go through his defence; and he was persuaded that the issue
would be favourable to him; Job 12:11-19. He, therefore, challenges any one among them
to declare himself the accuser; secure enough as to that point, as he well knew they could
not make good their charge: and as, in case of false accusation, the accuser was to

undergo the punishment due to the accused if guilty, he knew they would run no such
hazards, unless they knew themselves able to prove their charge. He, therefore, again
ends with a tender expostulation with the Almighty, begging that he might, before his
death, have an opportunity of publicly vindicating his integrity; since afterwards he
could have no hope of doing it; Job 12:20 to the end of chap. 14: Heath.
GUZIK, "A. Job complains about his friends.
1. (Job 12:1-3) Job sarcastically answers Zophar and his other friends.
Then Job answered and said:
“No doubt you are the people,
And wisdom will die with you!
But I have understanding as well as you;
I am not inferior to you.
Indeed, who does not know such things as these?”
a. No doubt you are the people: It is easy to hear the sarcastic and bitter tone of voice in
Job. That tone was appropriately taken, because Job’s friends really had acted as if they
were the people and if they had all wisdom.
b. I have understanding as well as you. . . . Indeed, who does not know such things as
these? In rebuke to Zophar and his friends, Job made two points. First, that he also was
a man of understanding. Second, that the theological principles presented by Zophar
and the others were really widely known.
i. “All your boasted wisdom consists only in strings of proverbs which are in every
person’s mouth, and are no proof of wisdom and experience in them that use them.”
(Clarke)
ii. In response, Job will speak plainly about the wisdom and greatness of God. “I would
we had another Job, to chastise the high-sounding language of modern theologians.
There are starting up in our midst men, who if they are not heretics in doctrine, are

aliens in speech.” (Spurgeon)
EBC, "BEYOND FACT AND FEAR TO GOD
Job 12:1-25; Job 13:1-28; Job 14:1-22
Job SPEAKS
ZOPHAR excites in Job’s mind great irritation, which must not be set down altogether to
the fact that he is the third to speak. In some respects he has made the best attack from
the old position, pressing most upon the conscience of Job. He has also used a curt
positive tone in setting out the method and principle of Divine government and the
judgment he has formed of his friend’s state. Job is accordingly the more impatient, if
not disconcerted. Zophar had spoken of the want of understanding Job had shown, and
the penetrating wisdom of God which at a glance convicts men of iniquity. His tone
provoked resentment. Who is this that claims to have solved the enigmas of providence,
to have gone into the depths of wisdom? Does he know any more, he himself, than the
wild ass’s colt?
And Job begins with stringent irony-
"No doubt but ye are the people
And wisdom shall die with you.
The secrets of thought, of revelation itself are yours. No doubt the world waited to be
taught till you were born. Do you not think so? But, after all, I also have a share of
understanding, I am not quite so void of intellect as you seem to fancy. Besides, who
knoweth not such things as ye speak? Are they new? I had supposed them to be
commonplaces. Yea, if you recall what I said, you will find that with a little more vigour
than yours I made the same declarations.
"A laughing stock to his neighbours am I,
I who called upon Eloah and He answered me, -
A laughing stock, the righteous and perfect man."

Job sees or thinks he sees that his misery makes him an object of contempt to men who
once gave him the credit of far greater wisdom and goodness than their own. They are
bringing out old notions, which are utterly useless, to explain the ways of God; they
assume the place of teachers; they are far better, far wiser now than he. It is more than
flesh can bear.
As he looks at his own diseased body and feels again his weakness, the cruelty of the
conventional judgment stings him. "In the thought of him that is at ease there is for
misfortune scorn; it awaiteth them that slip with the foot." Perhaps Job was mistaken,
but it is too often true that the man who fails in a social sense is the man suspected. Evil
things are found in him when he is covered with the dust of misfortune, things which no
one dreamed of before. Flatterers become critics and judges. They find that he has a bad
heart or that he is a fool.
But if those very good and wise friends of Job are astonished at anything previously said,
they shall be more astonished. The facts which their account of Divine providence very
carefully avoided as inconvenient Job will blurt out. They have stated and restated, with
utmost complacency, their threadbare theory of the government of God. Let them look
now abroad in the world and see what actually goes on, blinking no facts.
The tents of robbers prosper. Out in the desert there are troops of bandits who are never
overtaken by justice; and they that provoke God are secure, who carry a god in their
hand, whose sword and the reckless daring with which they use it make them to all
appearance safe in villainy. These are the things to be accounted for; and, accounting for
them, Job launches into a most emphatic argument to prove all that is done in the world
strangely and inexplicably to be the doing of God. As to that he will allow no question.
His friends shall know that he is sound on this head. And let them provide the defence of
Divine righteousness after he has spoken.
Here, however, it is necessary to consider in what way the limitations of Hebrew thought
must have been felt by one who, turning from the popular creed, sought a view more in
harmony with fact. Now-a-days the word nature is often made to stand for a force or
combination of forces conceived of as either entirely or partially independent of God.
Tennyson makes the distinction when he speaks of man:
"Who trusted God was love indeed
And love creation’s final law,
Though nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravin, shrieked against the creed,"

and again when he asks-
"Are God and nature then at strife
That nature lends such evil dreams,
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life?"
Now to this question, perplexing enough on the face of it when we consider what
suffering there is in the creation, how the waves of life seem to beat and break
themselves age after age on the rocks of death, the answer in its first stage is that God
and nature cannot be at strife. They are not apart; there is but one universe, therefore
one Cause. One Omnipotent there is whose will is done, whose character is shown in all
we see and all we cannot see, the issues of endless strife, the long results of perennial
evolution. But then comes the question, What is His character, of what spirit is He who
alone rules, who sends after the calm the fierce storm, after the beauty of life the
corruption of death? And one may say the struggle between Bible religion and modern
science is on this very field.
Cold heartless power, say some; no Father, but an impersonal Will to which men are
nothing, human joy and love nothing, to which the fair blossom is no more than the clod,
and the holy prayer no better than the vile sneer. On this, faith arises to the struggle.
Faith warm and hopeful takes reason into counsel, searches the springs of existence,
goes forth into the future and forecasts the end, that it may affirm and reaffirm against
all denial that One Omnipotent reigns who is all-loving, the Father of infinite mercy.
Here is the arena; here the conflict rages and will rage for many a day. And to him will
belong the laurels of the age who, with the Bible in one hand and the instruments of
science in the other, effects the reconciliation of faith with fact. Tennyson came with the
questions of our day. He passes and has not given a satisfactory answer. Carlyle has gone
with the "Everlasting Yea and No" beating through his oracles. Even Browning, a later
athlete, did not find complete reason for faith.
"From Thy will stream the worlds, life, and nature, Thy dread sabaoth."
Now return to Job. He considers nature; he believes in God; he stands firmly on the
conviction that all is of God. Hebrew faith held this, and was not limited in holding it, for
it is the fact. But we cannot wonder that providence disconcerted him, since the
reconcilation of "merciless" nature and the merciful God is not even yet wrought out.
Notwithstanding the revelation of Christ, many still find themselves in darkness just
when light is most urgently craved. Willing to believe, they yet lean to a dualism which

makes God Himself appear in conflict with the scheme of things, thwarted now and now
repentant, gracious in design but not always in effect. Now the limitation of the Hebrew
was this, that to his idea the infinite power of God was not balanced by infinite mercy,
that is, by regard to the whole work of His hands. In one stormy dash after another Job
is made to attempt this barrier. At moments he is lifted beyond it, and sees the great
universe filled with Divine care that equals power; for the present, however, he
distinguishes between merciful intent and merciless, and ascribes both to God.
What does he say? God is in the deceived and in the deceiver; they are both products of
nature, that is, creatures of God. He increaseth the nations and destroyeth them. Cities
arise and become populous. The great metropolis is filled with its myriads, "among
whom are six-score thousand that cannot discern between their right hand and their
left." The city shall fulfil its cycle and perish. It is God. Searching for reconciliation Job
looks the facts of human existence right in the face, and he sees a confusion, the whole
enigma which lies in the constitution of the world and of the soul. Observe how his
thought moves. The beasts, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, all living beings
everywhere, not self-created, with no power to shape or resist their destiny, bear witness
to the almightiness of God. In His hand is the lower creation; in His hand also, rising
higher, is the breath of all mankind. Absolute, universal is that power, dispensing life
and death as it broods over the ages. Men have sought to understand the ways of the
Great Being. The ear trieth words as the mouth tasteth meat. Is there wisdom with the
ancient, those who live long, as Bildad says? Yes: but with God are wisdom and strength;
not penetration only, but power. He discerns and does. He demolishes, and there is no
rebuilding. Man is imprisoned, shut up by misfortune, by disease. It is God’s decree, and
there is no opening till He allows. At His will the waters are dried up; at His will they
pour in torrents over the earth. And so amongst men there are currents of evil and good
flowing through lives, here in the liar and cheat, there in the victim of knavery; here in
the counsellors whose plans come to nothing; there in the judges who sagacity is
changed to folly; and all these currents, and cross currents, making life a bewildering
maze, have their beginning in the will of God, who seems to take pleasure in doing what
is strange and baffling. Kings take men captive; the bonds of the captives are loosed, and
the kings themselves are bound. What are princes and priests, what are the mighty to
Him? What is the speech of the eloquent? Where is the understanding of the aged when
He spreads confusion? Deep as in the very gloom of the grave the ambitious may hide
their schemes; the flux of events brings them out to judgment, one cannot foresee how.
Nations are raised up and destroyed; the chiefs of the people are made to fear like
children. Trusted leaders wander in a wilderness; they grope in midnight gloom; they
stagger like the drunken. Behold, says Job, all this I have seen. This is God’s doing. And
with this great God he would speak; he, a man, would have things out with the Lord of
all. [Job 13:3]
This impetuous passage, full of revolution, disaster, vast mutations, a phantasmagoria of
human struggle and defeat, while it supplies a note of time and gives a distinct clue to
the writer’s position as an Israelite, is remarkable for the faith that survives its apparent
pessimism. Others have surveyed the world and the history of change, and have
protested with their last voice against the cruelty that seemed to rule. As for any God,
they could never trust one whose will and power were to be found alike in the craft of the
deceiver and the misery of the victim, in the baffling of sincere thought and the
overthrow of the honest with the vile. But Job trusts on. Beneath every enigma, he looks

for reason; beyond every disaster, to a Divine end. The voices of men have come between
him and the voice of the Supreme. Personal disaster has come between him and his
sense of God. His thought is not free. If it were, he would catch the reconciling word, his
soul would hear the music of eternity. "I would reason with God." He clings to God-given
reason as his instrument of discovery.
Very bold is this whole position, and very reverent also, if you will think of it; far more
honouring to God than any attempt of the friends who, as Job says, appear to hold the
Almighty no better than a petty chief, so insecure in His position that He must be
grateful to any one who will justify His deeds. "Poor God, with nobody to help Him." Job
uses all his irony in exposing the folly of such a religion, the impertinence of presenting
it to him as a solution and a help. In short, he tells them, they are pious quacks, and, as
he will have none of them for his part, he thinks God will not either. The author is at the
very heart of religion here. The word of reproof and correction, the plea for providence
must go straight to the reason of man, or it is of no use. The word of the Lord must be a
two-edged sword of truth, piercing to the dividing asunder even of soul and spirit. That
is to say, into the centre of energy the truth must be driven which kills the spirit of
rebellion, so that the will of man, set free, may come into conscious and passionate
accord with the will of God. But reconciliation is impossible unless each will deal in the
utmost sincerity with truth, realising the facts of existence, the nature of the soul and the
great necessities of its discipline. To be true in theology we must not accept what seems
to be true, nor speak forensically, but affirm what we have proved in our own life and
gathered in utmost effort from Scripture and from nature. Men inherit opinions as they
used to inherit garments, or devise them, like clothes of a new fashion, and from within
the folds they speak, not as men but as priests, what is the right thing according to a
received theory. It will not do. Even of old time a man like the author of Job turned
contemptuously from school-made explanations and sought a living word. In our age the
number of those whose fever can be lulled with a working theory of religion and a
judicious arrangement of the universe is rapidly becoming small. Theology is being
driven to look the facts of life full in the face. If the world has learned anything from
modern science, it is the habit of rigorous research and the justification of free inquiry,
and the lesson will never be unlearned.
To take one error of theology. All men are concluded equally under God’s wrath and
curse; then the proofs of the malediction are found in trouble, fear, and pain. But what
comes of this teaching? Out in the world, with facts forcing themselves on
consciousness, the scheme is found hollow. All are not in trouble and pain. Those who
are afflicted and disappointed are often sincere Christians. A theory of deferred
judgment and happiness is made for escape; it does not, however, in the least enable one
to comprehend how, if pain and trouble be the consequences of sin, they should not be
distributed rightly from the first. A universal moral order cannot begin in a manner so
doubtful, so very difficult for the wayfaring man to read as he goes. To hold that it can is
to turn religion into an occultism which at every point bewilders the simple mind. The
theory is one which tends to blunt the sense of sin in those who are prosperous, and to
beget that confident Pharisaism which is the curse of church life. On the other hand, the
"sacrificed classes," contrasting their own moral character with that of the frivolous and
fleshly rich, are forced to throw over a theology which binds together sin and suffering,
and to deny a God whose equity is so far to seek. And yet, again, in the recoil from all this
men invent wersh schemes of bland goodwill and comfort, which have simply nothing to

do with the facts of life, no basis in the world as we know it, no sense of the rigour of
Divine love. So Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar remain with us and confuse theology until
some think it lost in unreason.
"But ye are patchers of lies,
Physicians of nought are ye all.
Oh that ye would only keep silence,
And it should be your wisdom". [Job 13:4-5]
Job sets them down with a current proverb-"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is
counted wise." He begs them to be silent. They shall now hear his rebuke.
"On behalf of God will ye speak wrong?
And for Him will ye speak deceit?
Will ye be partisans for Him?
Or for God will ye contend?"
Job finds them guilty of speaking falsely as special pleaders for God in two respects.
They insist that he has offended God, but they cannot point to one sin which he has
committed. On the other hand, they affirm positively that God will restore prosperity if
confession is made. But in this too they play the part of advocates without warrant. They
show great presumption in daring to pledge the Almighty to a course in accordance with
their idea of justice. The issue might be what they predict; it might not. They are
venturing on ground to which their knowledge does not extend. They think their
presumption justified because it is for religion’s sake. Job administers a sound rebuke,
and it extends to our own time. Special pleaders for God’s sovereign and unconditional
right and for His illimitable good nature, alike have warning here. What justification
have men in affirming that God will work out His problems in detail according to their
views? He has given to us the power to apprehend the great principles of His working.
He has revealed much in nature, providence, and Scripture, and in Christ; but there is
the "hiding of His power," "His path is in the mighty waters, and His judgments are not
known." Christ has said, "It is not for you to know times and seasons which the Father
hath set within His own authority." There are certainties of our consciousness, facts of
the world and of revelation from which we can argue. Where these confirm, we may
dogmatise, and the dogma will strike home. But no piety, no desire to vindicate the

Almighty or to convict and convert the sinner, can justify any man in passing beyond the
certainty which God has given him to that unknown which lies far above human ken.
"He will surely correct you
If in secret ye are partial.
Shall not His majesty terrify you,
And His dread fall upon you?" [Job 13:10-11]
The Book of Job, while it brands insincerity and loose reasoning, justifies all honest and
reverent research. Here, as in the teaching of our Lord, the real heretic is he who is false
to his own reason and conscience, to the truth of things as God gives him to apprehend
it, who, in short, makes believe to any extent in the sphere of religion. And it is upon this
man the terror of the Divine majesty is to fall.
We saw how Bildad established himself on the wisdom of the ancients. Recalling this,
Job flings contempt on his traditional sayings.
"Your remembrances are proverbs of ashes,
Your defences, defences of dust."
Did they mean to smite him with those proverbs as with stones? They were ashes. Did
they intrench themselves from the assaults of reason behind old suppositions? Their
ramparts were mere dust. Once more he bids them hold their peace, and let him alone
that he may speak out all that is in his mind. It is, he knows at the hazard of his life he
goes forward; but he will. The case in which he is can have no remedy excepting by an
appeal to God, and that final appeal he will make.
Now the proper beginning of this appeal is in the twenty-third verse (Job 13:23), with
the words: "How many are mine iniquities and my sins?" But before Job reaches it he
expresses his sense of the danger and difficulty under which he lies, interweaving with
the statement of these a marvellous confidence in the result of what he is about to do.
Referring to the declarations of his friends as to the danger that yet threatens if he will
not confess sin, he uses a proverbial expression for hazard of life.
"Why do I take my flesh in my teeth,

And put my life in my hand?"
Why do I incur this danger, do you say? Never mind. It is not your affair. For bare
existence I care nothing. To escape with mere consciousness for a while is no object to
me, as I now am. With my life in my hand I hasten to God.
"Lo! He will slay me: I will not delay-
Yet my ways will I maintain before Him". [Job 13:15]
The old Version here, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," is inaccurate. Still it
is not far from expressing the brave purpose of the man- prostrate before God, yet
resolved to cling to the justice of the case ashe apprehends it, assured that this will not
only be excused by God, but will bring about his acquittal or salvation. To grovel in the
dust, confessing himself a miserable sinner more than worthy of all the sufferings he has
undergone, while in his heart he has the consciousness of being upright and faithful-this
would not commend him to the Judge of all the earth. It would be a mockery of truth
and righteousness, therefore of God Himself. On the other hand, to maintain his
integrity which God gave him, to go on maintaining it at the hazard of all, is his only
course, his only safety.
"This also shall be my salvation,
For a godless man shall not live before Him."
The fine moral instinct of Job, giving courage to his theology, declares that God
demands "truth in the inward parts" and truth in speech-that man "consists in truth"-
that "if he betrays truth he betrays himself," which is a crime against his Maker. No man
is so much in danger of separating himself from God and losing everything as he who
acts or speaks against conviction.
Job has declared his hazard, that he is lying helpless before Almighty Power which may
in a moment crush him. He has also expressed his faith, that approaching God in the
courage of truth he will not be rejected, that absolute sincerity will alone give him a
claim on the infinitely True. Now turning to his friends as if in new defiance, he says:-
"Hear diligently my speech,
And my explanation with your ears.

Behold now, I have ordered my cause;
I know that I shall be justified.
Who is he that will contend with me?
For then would I hold my peace and expire."
That is to say, he has reviewed his life once more, he has considered all possibilities of
transgression, and yet his contention remains. So much does he build upon his claim on
God that, if any one could now convict him, his heart would fail, life would no more be
worth living; the foundation of hope destroyed, conflict would be at an end.
But with his plea to God still in view he expresses once more his sense of the
disadvantage under which he lies. The pressure of the Divine hand is upon him still, a
sore enervating terror which bears upon his soul. Would God but give him respite for a
little from the pain and the fear, then he would be ready either to answer the summons
of the Judge or make his own demand for vindication.
We may suppose an interval of release from pain or at least a pause of expectancy, and
then, in verse twenty-third (Job 13:23), Job begins his cry. The language is less
vehement than we have heard. It has more of the pathos of weak human life. He is one
with that race of thinking, feeling, suffering creatures who are tossed about on the waves
of existence, driven before the winds, of change like autumn leaves. It is the plea of
human feebleness and mortality we hear, and then, as the "still sad music" touches the
lowest note of wailing, there mingles with it the strain of hope.
"How many are mine iniquities and sins?
Make me to know my transgression and my sin."
We are not to understand here that Job confesses great transgressions, nor,
contrariwise, that he denies infirmity and error in himself. There are no doubt failures of
his youth which remain in memory, sins of desire, errors of ignorance, mistakes in
conduct such as the best men fall into. These he does not deny. But righteousness and
happiness have been represented as a profit and loss account, and therefore Job wishes
to hear from God a statement in exact form of all he has done amiss or failed to do, so
that he may be able to see the relation between fault and suffering, his faults and his
sufferings, if such relation there be. It appears that God is counting him an enemy (Job
13:24). He would like to have the reason for that. So far as he knows himself he has
sought to obey and honour the Almighty. Certainly there has never been in his heart any
conscious desire to resist the will of Eloah. Is it then for transgressions unwittingly

committed that he now suffers-for sins he did not intend or know of? God is just. It is
surely a part of His justice to make a sufferer aware why such terrible afflictions befall
him.
And then-is it worthwhile for the Almighty to be so hard on a poor weak mortal?
Wilt thou scare a driven leaf-
Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble-
That thou writest bitter judgments against me,
And makest me to possess the faults of my youth,
And puttest my feet in the stocks,
And watchest all my paths,
And drawest a line about the soles of my feet-
One who as a rotten thing is consuming,
As a garment that is moth eaten?
The sense of rigid restraint and pitiable decay was perhaps never expressed with so fit
and vivid imagery. So far it is personal. Then begins a general lamentation regarding the
sad fleeting life of man. His own prosperity, which passed as a dream, has become to Job
a type of the brief vain existence of the race tried at every moment by inexorable Divine
judgment; and the low mournful words of the Arabian chief have echoed ever since in
the language of sorrow and loss.
"Man that is born of woman,
Of few days is he and full of trouble.
Like the flower he springs up and withers;

Like a shadow he flees and stays not.
Is it on such a one Thou hast fixed Thine eye?
Bringest Thou me into Thy judgment?
Oh that the clean might come out of the unclean!
But there is not one."
Human frailty is both of the body and of the soul; and it is universal. The nativity of men
forbids their purity. Well does God know the weakness of His creatures; and why then
does He expect of them, if indeed He expects, a pureness that can stand the test of His
searching? Job cannot be free from the common infirmity of mortals. He is born of
woman. But why then is he chased with inquiry, haunted and scared by a righteousness
he cannot satisfy? Should not the Great God be forbearing with a man?
"Since his days are determined,
The number of his moons with Thee,
And Thou hast set him bounds not to be passed.
Look Thou away from him that he may rest,
At least fulfil as a hireling his day,"
Men’s life being so short, his death so sure and soon, seeing he is like a hireling in the
world, might he not be allowed a little rest? might he not, as one who has fulfilled his
day’s work, be let go for a little repose ere he die? That certain death, it weighs upon him
now, pressing down his thought.
For even a tree hath hope;
If it be hewn down it will sprout anew,
The young shoot thereof will not fail.

If in the earth its root wax old,
Or in the ground its stock should die
Yet at the scent of water it will spring,
And shoot forth boughs like a new plant.
But a man: he dies and is cut off;
Yea, when men die, they are gone.
Ebbs away the water from the sea,
And the stream decays and dries:
So when men have lain down they rise not;
Till the heavens vanish they never awake,
Nor are they roused from their sleep.
No arguments, no promises can break this deep gloom and silence into which the life of
man passes. Once Job had sought death; now a desire has grown within him, and with it
recoil from Sheol. To meet God, to obtain his own justification and the clearing of Divine
righteousness, to have the problem of life explained-the hope of this makes life precious.
Is he to lie down and rise no more while the skies endure? Is no voice to reach him from
the heavenly justice he has always confided in? The very thought is confounding. If he
were now to desire death it would mean that he had given up all faith, that justice, truth,
and even the Divine name of Eloah had ceased to have any value for him.
We are to behold the rise of a new hope, like a star in the firmament of his thought.
Whence does it spring?
The religion of the Book of Job, as already shown, is, in respect of form, a natural
religion; that is to say, the ideas are not derived from the Hebrew Scriptures. The writer
does not refer to the legislation of Moses and the great words of prophets. The

expression "As the Lord said unto Moses" does not occur in this book, nor any
equivalent. It is through nature and the human consciousness that the religious beliefs of
the poem appear to have come into shape. Yet two facts are to be kept fully in view.
The first is that even a natural religion must not be supposed to be a thing of man’s
invention, with no origin further than his dreams. We must not declare all religious
ideas outside those of Israel to be mere fictions of the human fancy or happy guesses at
truth. The religion of Teman may have owed some of its great thoughts to Israel. But,
apart from that, a basis of Divine revelation is always laid wherever men think and live.
In every land the heart of man has borne witness to God. Reverent thought, dwelling on
justice, truth, mercy, and all virtues found in the range of experience and consciousness,
came through them to the idea of God. Every one who made an induction as to the Great
Unseen Being, his mind open to the facts of nature and his own moral constitution, was
in a sense a prophet. As far as they went, the reality and value of religious ideas, so
reached, are acknowledged by Bible writers themselves. "The invisible things of God
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that
are made, even His everlasting power and divinity." God has always been revealing
Himself to men.
"Natural religion" we say: and yet, since God is always revealing Himself and has made
all men more or less capable of apprehending the revelation, even the natural is
supernatural. Take the religion of Egypt, or of Chaldaea, or of Persia. You may contrast
any one of these with the religion of Israel; you may call the one natural, the other
revealed. But the Persian speaking of the Great Good Spirit or the Chaldaean
worshipping a supreme Lord must have had some kind of revelation; and his sense of it,
not clear indeed, far enough below that of Moses or Isaiah, was yet a forth reaching
towards the same light as now shines for us.
Next we must keep it in view that Job does not appear as a thinker building on himself
alone, depending on his own religious experience. Centuries and ages of thought are
behind these beliefs which are ascribed to him, even the ideas which seem to start up
freshly as the result of original discovery. Imagine a man thinking for himself about
Divine things in that far away Arabian past. His mind, to begin with, is not a blank. His
father has instructed him. There is a faith that has come down from many generations.
He has found words in use which hold in them religious ideas, discoveries, perceptions
of Divine reality, caught and fixed ages before. When he learned language the products
of evolution, not only psychical, but intellectual and spiritual, became his. Eloah, the
lofty one, the righteousness of Eloah, the word of Eloah, Eloah as Creator, as Watcher of
men, Eloah as wise, unsearchable in wisdom, as strong, infinitely mighty, -these are
ideas he has not struck out for himself, but inherited. Clearly then a new thought,
springing from these, comes as a supernatural communication and has behind it ages of
spiritual evolution. It is new, but has its root in the old; it is natural, but originates in the
over nature.
Now the primitive religion of the Semites, the race to which Job belonged, to which also
the Hebrews belonged, has been of late carefully studied; and with regard to it certain
things have been established that bear on the new hope we are to find struck out by the

Man of Uz.
In the early morning of religious thought among those Semites it was universally
believed that the members of a family or tribe, united by blood relationship to each
other, were also related in the same way to their God. He was their father, the invisible
head and source of their community, on whom they had a claim so long as they pleased
him. His interest in them was secured by the sacrificial meal which he was invited and
believed to share with them. If he had been offended, the sacrificial offering was the
means of recovering his favour; and communion with him in those meals and sacrifices
was the inheritance of all who claimed the kinship of that clan or tribe. With the clearing
of spiritual vision this belief took a new form in the minds of the more thoughtful. The
idea of communion remained and the necessity of it to the life of the worshipper was felt
even more strongly when the kinship of the God with his subject family was, for the few
at least, no longer an affair of physical descent and blood relation. ship, but of spiritual
origin and attachment. And when faith rose from the tribal god to the idea of the
Heaven-Father, the one Creator and King communion with Him was felt to be in the
highest sense a vital necessity. Here is found the religion of Job. A main element of it
was communion with Eloah, an ethical kinship, with Him, no arbitrary or merely
physical relation but of the spirit. That is to say, Job has at the heart of his creed the
truth as to roans origin and nature. The author of the book is a Hebrew; his own faith is
that of the people from whom we have the Book of Genesis; but he treats here of man’s
relation to God from the ethnic side, such as may be taken now by reasoner treating of
spiritual evolution.
Communion with Eloah had been Job’s life and with it had been associated his many
years of wealth, dignity, and influence. Lest his children should fall from it and lose their
most precious inheritance, he used to bring the periodical offerings. But at length his
own communion was interrupted. The sense of being at on with Eloah, if not lost,
became dull and faint. It is for the restoration of his very life-not as we might think of
religious feeling, but of actual spirit energy-he is now concerned. It is this that underlies
his desire for God to speak with him, his demand for an opportunity of pleading his
cause. Some might expect that he would ask his friends to offer sacrifice on his behalf,
But he makes no such request. The crisis has come in a region higher than sacrifice,
where observances are of no use. Thought only can reach it; the discovery of reconciling
truth alone can satisfy. Sacrifices which for the old world alone sustained the relation
with God could no more for Job restore the intimacy of the spiritual Lord. With a
passion for this fellowship keener than ever, since he now more distinctly realises what it
is, a fear blends in the heart of the man, Death will be upon him soon. Severed from God
he will fall away into the privation of that world where is neither praise nor service,
knowledge nor device. Yet the truth which lies at the heart of his religion does not yield.
Leaning all upon it, he finds it strong, elastic. He sees at least a possibility of
reconciliation; for how can the way back to God ever be quite closed?
What difficulty there was in his effort we know. To the common thought of the time
when this book was written, say that of Hezekiah, the state of the dead was not
extinction indeed, but an existence of extreme tenuity and feebleness. In Sheol there was
nothing active. The hollow ghost of the man was conceived of as neither hoping nor
fearing, neither originating nor receiving impressions. Yet Job dares to anticipate that

even in Sheol a set time of remembrance will be ordained for him and he shall hear the
thrilling call of God. As it approaches this climax the poem flashes and glows with
prophetic fire.
Oh that Thou would’st hide me in Sheol,
That Thou would’st keep me secret until Thy wrath be past,
That Thou would’st appoint a set time, and remember me!
If a (strong) man die, shall he live?
All the days of my appointed time would I wait
Till my release came.
Thou would’st call, I would answer Thee;
Thou would’st have a desire to the work of Thy hands.
Not easily can we now realise the extraordinary step forward made in thought when the
anticipation was thrown out of spiritual life going on beyond death ("would I wait"),
retaining intellectual potency in that region otherwise dark and void to the human
imagination ("I would answer Thee"). From both the human side and the Divine the poet
has advanced a magnificent intuition, a springing arch into which he is unable to fit the
keystone-the spiritual body; for He only could do this who long afterwards came to be
Himself the Resurrection and the Life. But when this poem of Job had been given to the
world a new thought was implanted in the soul of the race, a new hope that should fight
against the darkness of Sheol till that morning when the sunrise fell upon an empty
sepulchre, and one standing in the light asked of sorrowful men, Why seek ye the living
among the dead?
"Thou would’st have a desire to the work of Thy hands." What a philosophy of Divine
care underlies the words! They come with a force Job seems hardly to realise. Is there a
High One who makes men in His own image, capable of fine achievement, and then casts
them away in discontent or loathing? The voice of the poet rings in a passionate key
because he rises tea thought practically new to the human mind. He has broken through
barriers both of faith and doubt into the light of his hope and stands trembling on the
verge of another world. "One must have had a keen perception of the profound relation
between the creature and his Maker in the past to be able to give utterance to such an
imaginative expectation respecting the future."

But the wrath of God still appears to rest upon Job’s life; still He seems to keep in
reserve, sealed up, unrevealed, some record of transgressions for which He has
condemned His servant. From the height of hope Job falls away into an abject sense of
the decay and misery to which man is brought by the continued rigour of Eloah’s
examination. As with shocks of earthquake mountains are broken, and waters by
constant flowing wash down the soil and the plants rooted in it, so human life is wasted
by the Divine severity. In the world the children whom a man loved are exalted or
brought low, but he knows nothing of it. His flesh corrupts in the grave and his soul in
Sheol languishes.
"Thou destroyest the hope of man.
Thou ever prevailest against him and he passeth
Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away."
The real is at this point so grim and insistent as to shut off the ideal and confine thought
again to its own range. The energy of the prophetic mind is overborne, and unintelligible
fact surrounds and presses hard the struggling personality.
PARKER, "Job"s Reply to His Three Friends.
V.
Job 12-14
Now that the case in some measure of completeness is before us, we may profitably
consider the history on a larger scale than its merely personal aspect. We have elements
enough, in these fourteen chapters, for the construction of a world. We have the good
man; the spirit of evil; the whole story of affliction and loss, pain and fear; and we have
three comforters, coming from various points, with hardly various messages to be
addressed to a desolate heart. Now if we look upon the instance as typical rather than
personal, we shall really grasp the personal view in its deepest meanings. Let us, then,
enlarge the scene in all its incidents and proportions; then instead of one Prayer of
Manasseh ,, Job , we shall have the entire human race, instead of one accuser we shall
have the whole spirit of evil which works so darkly and ruinously in the affairs of men,
and instead of the three comforters we shall have the whole scheme of consolatory
philosophy and theology, as popularly understood, and as applied without utility. Song
of Solomon , then, we have not the one- Job , but the whole world-Job: the personal
patriarch is regarded but as the typical man; behind him stand the human ranks of every
age and land.

We have little to do with the merely historical letter of the Book of Genesis: we want to
go further; we want to know what man was in the thought and purpose of God. The
moment we come to printed letters, we are lost. No man can understand letters, except
in some half-way, some dim, intermediate sense, which quite as often confuses as
explains realities. Yet we cannot do without letters: they are helps—little, uncertain, yet
not wholly inconvenient auxiliaries. We want to know what God meant before he spoke a
single word. The moment he said, "Let us make man in our image," we lost the solemnity
of the occasion,—that is to say, the higher, diviner solemnity. If it had been possible for
us to have seen the thought without hearing, when it was a pure thought, without even
the embodiment of words,—the unspoken, eternal purpose of God,—then we should
understand what is to be the issue of this tragedy which we call Life. It was in eternity
that God created man: he only showed man in time, or gave man a chance of seeing his
own little imperfect nature. Man is a child of eternity. Unless we get that view of the
occasion, we shall be fretted with all kinds of details; our eyes will be pierced and divided
as to their vision by ten thousand little things that are without focus or centre: we must
from eternity look upon the little battlefield of time, and across that battlefield once
more into the calm eternity; then we shall see things in their right proportions,
distances, colours, and relations, and out of the whole will come a peace which the world
never gave and which the world cannot take away. Hear the great Creator in the
sanctuary of eternity; his words are these—"My word shall not return unto me void."
What is his "word"? This: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Is that
word not to return void to the speaker? That is certainly the decree and oath of the Bible.
But how long it takes to work out this sacred issue! Certainly: because the work is great.
Learn how great in the idea of God is humanity from the circumstance that it takes long
ages to shape and mould and inspire a man with the image and likeness and force of
God. The great process is going on; God"s word is to be verified and fulfilled; at the last
there is to stand up a humanity, faultless, pure, majestic, worthy, through God, to share
God"s eternity.
Now, as a matter of fact, some men are farther on in this divine line than others are. We
have seen the purpose: it is to make a perfect man and an upright; a man that fears God
and eschews evil and lives in God; and, as a matter of fact, let us repeat, some men are
farther along that ideal line than other men are. As a simple matter of experience, we are
ready to testify that there are Jobs, honestly good men, honourable persons, upright
souls: men that say concerning every perplexity in life, What is the right thing to be
done? what is good, true, honest, lovely, and of good report?—men who ask moral
questions before entering into the engagements, the conflicts, and the business of life.
And, as a matter of fact, these Jobs do develop or reveal or make manifest the spirit of
evil: they bring up what devil there is in the universe, and make the universe see the dark
and terrible image. But for these holy men we should know nothing about the spirit of
evil. Wherever the sons of God come together we see the devil most patently. We are
educated by contrasts, or we are helped in our understanding of difficulties by things
which contrast one another: we know the day because we know the night, and we know
the night because we know the day. We are set between extremes; we look upon the one
and upon the other, and wonder, and calculate, and average, and then make positive and
workable conclusions. Why fight about "devil"? There is a far greater word than that
about which there is no controversy. Why then fret the soul by asking speculative
questions about a personality that cannot be defined and apprehended by the mortal
imagination, when there lies before our sight the greater word "evil"? If there had been

any reason to doubt the evil, we should have made short work of all controversy
respecting the devil. It is the evil which surrounds us like a black cordon that makes the
devil possible. In a world in which we ourselves have seen and experienced in many ways
impureness, folly, crime, hypocrisy, selfishness, all manner of twisted and perverted
motive, why should we trouble ourselves to connect all these things with a personality,
speculative or revealed? There are the dark birds of night—the black, the ghastly facts: so
long as they press themselves eagerly upon our attention, and put us to all manner of
expense, inconvenience, and suffering, surely there is ground enough to go upon, and
there is ground enough to accept the existence of any number of evil spirits—a number
that might darken the horizon and put out the very sun by their blackness. We might
discredit the mystery if we could get rid of the fact. So far, then, we have the purpose of
God, the ideal Prayer of Manasseh , the spirit of evil arising to counteract his purposes
and test his quality; then we have the whole spirit of consolatory philosophy and
theology as represented by Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar. Let us hear what that whole
system has to give us:—
Three things, with varieties and sub-sections; but substantially three things. First, Fate.
Philosophy has not scrupled to utter that short, sharp, cruel word. Things happen
because they must happen: you are high or low, bad or good, fortunate or unfortunate,
because there is an operation called Fatalism—severe, tyrannous, oppressive, inexorable.
So one comforter comes to tell you that what you are suffering cannot be helped; you
must bear it stoically: tears are useless, prayer is wasted breath; as for resignation, you
may sentimentalise about it, but as a matter of fact, you must submit. One comforter
talks this dark language: he points to what he calls facts; he says, Look at all history, and
you will find that men have to sup sorrow, or drink wine out of golden goblets, according
to the operation of a law which has not yet been apprehended or authoritatively defined:
life is a complicated necessity; the grindstone is turned round, and you must lay
yourselves upon it, and suffer all its will—a blind, unintelligent will; a contradiction in
terms if you like; a will that never gives any account of itself, but grinds on, and grinds
small. That comforter makes his speech, and the suffering world says—No: thou art a
miserable comforter: oh that I could state my case as I feel it! continues that suffering
world—then all thy talk would be so much vanity, or worthless wind: thou braggart, thou
stoic, thou man of the iron heart, eat thine own comfort if thou canst digest steel, and
feed upon thy philosophy if thou canst crush into food the stones of the wilderness: thy
comfort is a miserable condolence.
Then some other comforter says: The word "Fate" is not the right word; it is cold,
lifeless, very bitter; the real word is Sovereignty—intelligent, personal sovereignty.
Certainly that is a great rise upon the former theory. If we have come into the region of
life, we may come into the region of righteousness. Explain to me, thou Bildad, what is
the meaning of Sovereignty: I am in sorrow, my eyes run away in rivers of tears, and I
am overwhelmed with bitterest distress,—what meanest thou by Sovereignty? I like the
word because of its vitality; I rejected the other speaker who talked of Fate because I felt
within me that he was wrong, although I could not answer him in words; but
Sovereignty—tell me about that. And the answer is: It means that there is a great
Sovereign on the throne of the universe; lofty, majestic, throned above all hierarchies,
princedoms, powers; an infinite Ruler; a Governor most exalted, giving to none an
account of his way, always carrying out his own purposes whatever man may suffer; he
moves with his head aloft; he cares not what life his feet tread upon, what existences he

destroys by his onward march: his name is God, Sovereign, Ruler, Governor, King,
Tyrant. And the suffering world-Job says, No: there may be a Sovereign, but that is not
his character; if that were his character he would be no sovereign: the very word
sovereign, when rightly interpreted, means a relation that exists by laws and operations
of sympathy, trust, responsibility, stewardship, account, rewards, punishments: be he
whom he may who walks from star to star, he is no tyrant: I could stop him on his course
and bring him to tears by the sight of a flower; I could constrain him to marvel at his
own tenderness: I have seen enough of life to know that it is not a tyrannised life, that it
does not live under continual terror; often there is a dark cloud above it and around it,
but every now and then it breaks into prayer and quivers into song: No! Miserable
comforter art thou, preacher of sovereignty; not so miserable as the apostle of Fate, but
if thou hast ventured to call God Tyrant, there is something within me, even the
heartthrob, which tells me that thou hast not yet touched the reality, the mystery of this
case.
Then another man—Zophar he may be called—says, Not "Fate," not "Sovereignty" as just
defined by Bildad, but Penalty,—that is the meaning of thy suffering, O world: thou art a
criminal world, thou art a thief, a liar, oft-convicted; thou hast broken every
commandment of God, thou hast sinned away the morning and the midday, yea, and at
eventide thou hast been far from true and good: world, thou art suffering pains at thine
heart, and they are sharp pains; they are God"s testimony to thine ill-behaviour; a well-
conducted world would have swung for ever and ever in cloudless sunshine; thou hast
run away from God, thou art a prodigal world, thou art in a far country in the time of
famine, and God has sent hunger to punish thee for thy wantonness and iniquity. And
the world-Job says—No: miserable comforters are ye all! There seems to be a little truth
even in what the first speaker said, a good deal of truth in what the second speaker
revealed to me about sovereignty, and there is an unquestionable truth in what Zophar
has said about penalty: I know I have done wrong, and I feel that God has smitten me for
my wrong-doing; but I also feel this, that not one of you has touched the reality of the
case: I cannot tell you what the reality is yet, but you have left the ground uncovered, you
are the victims of your own philosophy, and your own imperfect theology; I rise and at
least convict you of half-truths: you have not touched my wound with a skilled hand.
This is the condition of the Book of Job up to this moment; that is to say, within the four
corners of the first fourteen chapters—Job the ideal man; Job developing the spirit of
evil by his very truth and goodness; men coming from different points with little creeds
and little dogmas, and imperfect philosophies and theologies, pelting him with maxims
and with truisms and commonplaces; and the man says, "Miserable comforters are ye
all": I know what ye have said, I have seen all that long ago; but you have not touched the
heart of the case, its innermost mystery and reality; your ladder does not reach to
heaven; you are clever and well-skilled in words up to a given point, but you double back
upon yourselves, and do not carry your reasoning forward to its final issue. That is so.
Now we understand this book up to the fourteenth chapter. We were not surprised to
find a Job in the world, a really honest, upright, good Prayer of Manasseh , reputed for
his integrity and trusted for his wisdom; that did not surprise us: we were not surprised
that such a man should be assaulted, attacked by the spirit of evil, for even we ourselves,
in our imperfect quality of goodness, know that there is a breath from beneath, a blast
from hell, that hinders the ascent of our truest prayers. And we can believe well in all
these comforters as realities; they are not dramatic men, they are seers and

traditionalists and lovers of maxims, persons who assail the world"s sorrow with all
kinds of commonplaces, and incomplete and self-contradictory nostrums and assertions:
and we feel that Job is right when he says—I cannot take your comfort; the meat you give
me I cannot eat, the water you supply me with is poison: leave me! Oh that I could come
face to face with God! He would tell me—and he will yet tell me—the meaning of it all.
We need not pause here, because we have the larger history before us, and we know the
secret of all. What is it? What was hidden from Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar? What
was it these men did not see? They did not see the meaning of chastening, chastisement,
purification by sorrow, trial by grief; they did not know that Love is the highest
sovereignty, and that all things work together for good to them that love God; that loss is
gain, poverty is wealth, that affliction is the beginning of real robustness of soul, when
rightly apprehended and fearlessly and reverently applied: "Now no chastening for the
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the
peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby"; "Brethren,
count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations"; "Whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." That is the real meaning of all
the sorrow, allowing such portion of truth to the theory of Sovereignty and Penalty,
which undoubtedly inheres in each and both of them. But God means to train us, to
apply a principle and process of cultivation to us. He will try us as gold is tried: but he is
the Refiner, he sits over the furnace; and as soon as God can discover his own image in
us he will take us away from the fire, and make us what he in the far eternity meant to
make us when he said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." How all this
process of chastening becomes necessary is obvious enough, if we go back into our own
hearts, and run our eye over the whole line of our own experience. If we have true light
in us we shall have no doubt as to the necessity of this chastening and its meaning. Even
God to reach his own ideal had himself to suffer. Is God simply a watching Sovereign,
saying, These men must suffer a little more; the fire must be made hotter, the trial must
be made intenser: I will watch them in perfect equanimity; my calm shall never be
disturbed; the suffering shall be theirs, not mine; I will simply operate upon them
mechanically and distantly? That is not the Bible conception of God. This is the Bible
conception,—namely, that in working out the ideal manhood, God himself suffers more
than it is possible for man to suffer, because of the larger capacity—the infinite capacity
of woe. Now we seem to be coming into better ground. How much does God suffer for
his human children? We know that he has wept over them, yearned after them, proposed
to send his Son to save them, has in reality sent his Son in the fulness of time, born of a
woman, born under the law; we know that the Bible declares that the Son of God did give
himself up for us all, the just for the unjust, and that Christ, the God- Prayer of
Manasseh , is the apostle of the universe; his text is Sacrifice, his offer is Pardon. How
much did God suffer? The sublimest answer to that inquiry is—Behold the cross of
Christ. If you would know whether God"s heart was broken over our moral condition,
look at the cross of Christ; if you would understand that God is bent on some gracious
and glorious purpose of Prayer of Manasseh -making, behold the cross of Christ. It will
not explain itself in words, but it is possible for us to wait there, to watch there, until we
involuntarily exclaim, This is no man; this is no malefactor: who is he? Watch on, wait
on; read yourself in the light of his agony, and at last you will say, "Truly this man was
the Son of God." What is he doing there? Redeeming the world. What is his purpose? To
make man in God"s image and God"s likeness. Then is the process long-continued,
stretching over the ages? Yes: he who is from everlasting to everlasting takes great
breadths of time for the revelation of his fatherhood and the realisation of all the
purposes of his love.

PULPIT, "The discourse of Job, here begun, continues through three chapters (Job 12:1-
25; Job 13:1-28; Job 14:1-22.). It is thought to form the conclusion of the first day's
colloquy. In it Job for the first time really pours scorn upon his friends, and makes a
mock of them (see verses 2, 8, 20; Job 13:4-13). This, however, is a secondary matter; his
main object is to justify his previous assertions,
Job 12:1, Job 12:2
And Job answered and said, No doubt but ye are the people. Bitterly ironical. Ye are
those to whom alone it belongs to speak—the only "people" to whom attention is due.
And wisdom shall die with you. "At your death," i.e; "all wisdom will have fled the earth;
there will be no one left who knows anything." At least, no doubt, you think so.
2 "Doubtless you are the people,
and wisdom will die with you!
BAR ES, "No doubt but ye are the people - That is, the only wise people. You
have engrossed all the wisdom of the world, and all else are to be regarded as fools. This
is evidently the language of severe sarcasm; and it shows a spirit fretted and chafed by
their reproaches. Job felt contempt for their reasoning. and meant to intimate that their
maxims, on which they placed so much reliance, were common-place, and such as every
one was familar with.
And wisdom shall die with you - This is ironical, but it is language such as is
common perhaps every where. “The people of the East,” says Roberts, “take great
pleasure in irony, and some of their satirical sayings are very cutting. When a sage
intimates that he has superior wisdom or when he is disposed to rally another for his
meagrc attainments, he says, ‘Yes, yes, you are the man! ‘ ‘Your wisdom is like the sea.’
‘When you die, whither will wisdom go?’” In a serious sense, language like this is used by
the Classical writers to describe the death of eminently great or good men. They speak of
wisdom, bravery, piety, or music, as dying with them. Thus, Moschus, Idyll. iii. 12.
ᆑττι βίων τέθνηκεν ᆇ βώκολος, ᅞττι σᆷν αᆒτሬ
Καᆳ τᆵ µέλος τέθνακε, καᆳ ᆡλετο ∆ωρίς ᅊειδός.
Hotti biōn tethnēken ho bōkolos, esti sun autō

Kai to melos tethnake, kai ōleto Dōris aeidos.
“Bion the swain is dead, and with him song
Has died, and the Doric muse has perished.”
Expressions like these are common. Thus, in the “Pleasures of Hope” it is said:
And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell.
CLARKE, "No doubt but ye are the people - Doubtless ye are the wisest men in
the world; all wisdom is concentrated in you; and when ye die, there will no more be
found on the face of the earth! This is a strong irony.
GILL, "No doubt but ye are the people,.... Which is said not seriously, meaning
that they were but of the common people, that are generally ignorant, and have but little
knowledge, at least of things sublime, especially in matters of religion; wherefore,
though they took upon them to be his teachers and dictators to him, and censors of him,
they were not above the rank, but in the class of people of low and mean understandings;
see Joh_7:49; this sense indeed agrees with what is after said, "who knoweth not such
things as these?" but since Job compares himself with them, and asserts he is not
inferior to them, it supposes them to have a degree of knowledge and understanding of
things somewhat above the common people; wherefore these words are to be taken
ironically, exposing their vanity and self-conceit: "ye are the people"; the only, and all the
people in the world of importance and consequence for good sense and wisdom; the only
wise and knowing folk, the men of reason and understanding; all the rest are but fools
and asses, or like the wild ass's colt, as Zophar had said, and which Job took as pointing
to him; so the word in the Arabic language (c) signifies the more excellent and better sort
of people; or, ye are the only people of God, his covenant people, his servants; that are
made acquainted with the secrets of wisdom, as none else are:
and wisdom shall die with you; you have all the wisdom of the world, and when you
die it will be all gone; there will be none left in the world: thus he represents them as
monopolizers and engrossers of wisdom and knowledge, full of it in their conceit,
allowing none to have any share with them: and by all this he not only upbraids them
with their vanity and self-conceit, but puts them in mind, that, as wise as they were, they
must die; and that, though their wisdom with respect to them, or any use they could
make of it in the grave, where there is none, would die too; or that their wisdom was but
the wisdom of the world, which comes to nought; yet there would be wisdom still in the
world, and that which is true, which God makes known to men, even the wisdom of God
in a mystery, the wisdom hid in himself; and who has the residue of the Spirit and his
gifts to instruct men in it, and qualify them to be teachers of others; by which means,
though men, even the best of men, die, yet the word of God, the means of true wisdom
and knowledge, will always abide.
JAMISO , "wisdom shall die with you — Ironical, as if all the wisdom in the
world was concentrated in them and would expire when they expired. Wisdom makes “a

people:” a foolish nation is “not a people” (Rom_10:19).
K&D, "The admission, which is strengthened by ‫י‬ ִⅴ ‫ם‬ָ‫נ‬ ְ‫מ‬ፎ, truly then (distinct from ‫ם‬ָ‫נ‬ ְ‫מ‬ፎ
‫י‬ ִⅴ, for truly, Job_36:4, similar to ‫י‬ ִⅴ ‫ה‬ֵ ִ‫,ה‬ behold indeed, Psa_128:4), is intended as irony:
ye are not merely single individuals, but the people = race of men (‫ם‬ ָ‫,ע‬ as Isa_40:7; Isa_
42:5), so that all human understanding is confined to you, and there is none other to be
found; and when once you die, it will seem to have died out. The lxx correctly renders: µᆱ
ᆓµεሏς ᅚστᆯ ᅎνθρωποι µόνοι (according to the reading of the Cod. Alex.); he also has a heart
like them, he is therefore not empty, ‫,נבוב‬ Job_11:12. Heart is, like Job_34:10, comp. ‫נלבב‬
, Job_11:12, equivalent to νοሞς διάνοια; Ewald's translation, “I also have a head even as
you” (“brains” would better accord with the connection), is a western form of expression,
and modern and unbiblical (vid., Division ”Herz und Haupt,” Psychol. iv. §12). He is not
second to them; ‫ן‬ ִ‫מ‬ ‫ל‬ ַ‫פ‬ָ‫,נ‬ like Job_13:2, properly to slip from, to be below any one; ‫ן‬ ִ‫מ‬ is not
the comparative (Ewald). Oetinger's translation is not bad: I cannot slink away at your
presence. Who has not a knowledge of such things as those which they, by setting
themselves up as defenders of God, have presented to him! ‫י‬ ִ ִ‫א‬ ‫ה‬ָ‫י‬ ָ‫ה‬ is equivalent to ‫י‬ ִ ְ‫ע‬ ַ‫ד‬ָ‫,י‬
σύνοιδα, Isa_59:12.
No doubt the world waited to be taught till you were
born.
"Truly, then you are the people, And with you wisdom will die!" You guys have all of the
answers to life and when you die, so will the answers! You stand here before me as all of
mankind, so that all of human understanding is confined to you, and there is none other to be
found, and when you three die, wisdom will die out!
STEDMAN We know exactly how he felt! These men had all the answers; they knew all
the problems. Job says, "When you pass from the scene, there will be nothing left. You
know it all." From Verse 3 on to the end of the chapter, he points out that they deal with
elementary truths, things that anybody could know:
BELIEVERS BIBLE, "Job has begun to regain some of his sense of humor, although
it is what we used to call "G.I. humor." Marching on his "dogs," and
being reduced to the level of a "dog" by his "dog-tags," the WW I and
WW II infantryman was called "Dog-face." And if you have ever wondered
why they say "fight like dogs," you should either watch a gang battle
of four curs or else watch "The Battalion in the Attack." Job has
begun to smile wryly under the bombardment of 11:11-12, and now he
says: "No doubt but ye are THE PEOPLE" (See Acts 21:28 for the old
heave-ho about "THE PEOPLE"), "And wisdom shall die with you" (v 2).
The English "original" is much stronger than the weak paraphrases by

Dodd (NEB) and Taylor (TLB). An ironic statement like verse 2 should
have some "iron" in it, so Job's speech in the AV (1611) is pure irony
without any mixture of "sugar and spice" or anything "nice."
Furthermore, the peculiar choice of words by Job (olbliterated by Dodd
and Taylor) is a veiled reference to the "gods" of Genesis 6:1-5, who
were "men of renown." Since this reference (again) deals wih the
coming of "humanoids" from outer space, there is an immediate
ecumenical conspiracy by the scholars to rid the text of the
revelation at any cost: J. F. and Brown change it to "a people," the
corrupt Septuagint says, "Men," and Adam Clarke makes it "the wisest
MEN." (Ibid., p. 65.)"
1-12 in verse:
One thing is for sure, there is no doubt,
When you die, the lights of wisdom will go out.
You guys need to face it, I too have a mind,
And you do not leave me behind.
In pride you make it big show,
But everything you say I also know.
My friends now just laugh at me,
Though once, only my good they did see.
When all goes well men hate to see
The pain of those in agony.
Even foolish men with homemade gods
Are able to beat the suffering odds.
They live a life that is secure
And have no tragedy to endure.
All of nature can show and tell
The very things on which you dwell.
They all know God's hand did this,
For by his hand come pain and bliss.
By his hand all things have breath.
He is the Lord of life and death.
The ear can taste if words are good
Just as the tongue can taste of food.
Is not wisdom among the aged found,
For long life makes them quite profound.
Strahan, " o doubt but ye are the people. The sarcasm is levelled
at all the three friends, though specially meant for the last
speaker, whose arrogance has provoked it. * Superior persons '
is the rendering suggested. Supermen ' is a modern word often used with a similar
flavour of irony. It is possible that ' the people ' means ' the
nation,' in which case the saying resembles the famous Eltat
test moi. The secrets of wisdom are known to the Three alone,
and when they die, she will die with them, leaving a world of

fools.
Today we would use sarcasm like this by saying, okey Einstein, I guess you know all
and the rest of us are mere dunces who must bow to your every word or live like
ignorant idiots. Oh wise ones, what fools we are to not see you have grasped all the
wisdom of the world. Job is saying you are full of it, with all your conceited
arrogance that pretends to have a monopoly on the truth. This is severe sarcasm and
it shows Job's contempt for their commonplace platitudes they are using to scold
him.
BE SO , Job 12:2. o doubt but ye are the people — You, of all people, are the
most eminent for wisdom; the only men living of distinguished knowledge and
prudence. You have engrossed all the reason of mankind, and each of you has as
much wisdom as a whole people put together. And wisdom shall die with you —
All the wisdom which is in the world lives in you, and will be utterly lost when you
die. When wise and good men die, it is a comfort to think that wisdom and
goodness do not die with them: it is folly to think that there will be a great,
irreparable loss of us when we are gone, since God has the residue of the Spirit,
and can raise up others more fit to do his work.
COFFMA , ""And wisdom shall die with you" (Job 12:2). It is amazing that
anyone could suppose that these words were intended as a compliment; but Blair
wrote, "Job gives them the benefit of the doubt, saying, `Wisdom shall die with
you.' He inferred that they were wise."[4] We agree with Barnes that, "This is
evidently the language of severe sarcasm; and it shows a spirit fretted and chafed
by their reproaches."[5]
"(For) him that is at ease, there is a contempt for misfortune" (Job 12:5). Job, who
had been the greatest man in the East, who had been the special object of God's
blessings, who had called upon God, and whom God had answered, - even that
man, who, at the moment, had been reduced by the most superlative misfortunes,
was experiencing the contemptuous laughter of his neighbors; and in these words
he truly spoke of a universal trait of our fallen human nature, namely, that of
despising the unfortunate.
"In sheer exasperation, Job here bewails the situation. He knows that he is a godly
man of great wisdom and understanding; but here he is treated like a criminal and
a simpleton, solely upon the basis of his friends' theory, a theory that is flatly
contradicted by the fact that known robbers are prospering while he is reduced to

mockery."[6]
In these words, Job is thoroughly contemptuous of the conceited and arrogant
ignorance of his `comforters'; and in this great response, he blistered them with
devastating and unanswerable criticisms.
"The tents of robbers prosper" (Job 12:6). This is the dramatic and unanswerable
contradiction of the false theory of his `comforters.' "This was Job's original
proposition; and he clung to it throughout the whole encounter, that God does not
deal with men in this life according to their character."[7]
3 But I have a mind as well as you;
I am not inferior to you.
Who does not know all these things?
BAR ES, "But I have understanding as well as you - Margin, as in the Hebrew
“an heart.” The word “heart” in the Scriptures is often used to denote the understanding
or mind. It seems to have been regarded as the source of that which was called life or
soul. Indeed, I do not recollect a single instance in the Scriptures in which the word
“head” is used, as with us, as the seat of the intellect, or where the distinction is adverted
to that is so common with us, between the head and the heart. With us, the heart is the
seat of the affections and emotions; with the Hebrews, it was the seat of understanding,
and the σπλάγχνα splangchna - the viscera, the bowels, were the seat of the emotions; see
the notes at Isa_16:11. A more correct physiology has taught us that the brain is the
organ of the intellect, and we now speak of “the heart” as the seat of the affections. The
Romans regarded the “breast” as the seat of the soul. Thus, Virgil, speaking of the death
of Lucagus by the hand of Aeneas, says:
Tum latebras animae pectus mucrone recludit
Aeneid x. 601.
I am not inferior to you - Margin, “fall not lower than.” This is the literal
translation: “I do not fall beneath you.” Job claims to be equal to them in the power of
quoting the sayings. of the ancients; and in order to show this, he proceeds to adduce a

number of proverbial sayings, occupying the remainder of this chapter, to show that he
was familiar with that mode of reasoning, and that in this respect he was fully their
equal. This may be regarded as a trial of skill, and was quite common in the East.
Wisdom consisted in storing up a large amount of proverbs and maxims, and in applying
them readily and pertinently on all public occasions; and in this controversy, Job was by
no means disposed to yield to them.
Yea, who knoweth not such things as these? - Margin, “With whom” are “not
such as these?” The meaning is, that instead of being original, the sentiments which they
advanced were the most commonplace imaginable. Job not only said that he knew them,
but that it would be strange if every body did not know them.
CLARKE, "I am not inferior to you - I do not fall short of any of you in
understanding, wisdom, learning, and experience.
Who knoweth not such things as these? - All your boasted wisdom consists only
in strings of proverbs which are in every person’s mouth, and are no proof of wisdom
and experience in them that use them.
GILL, "But I have understanding as well as you,.... A natural understanding, or
an understanding of natural things, which distinguishes a man from a brute; and a
spiritual understanding, an understanding enlightened by the spirit of God, which is
naturally dark as to divine things; but he had an understanding given him, to know
himself, his state and condition by nature; to know God, his love and grace to men, and,
as his covenant God, to know Christ his living Redeemer, who should stand on the earth
in the latter day, both to be his Redeemer and his Judge; to know his interest in him, and
in the blessings of grace and glory by him: or, "I have an heart as well as you" (d); a wise
and an understanding one; a new heart, and a right spirit; an heart to fear and serve the
Lord, a sincere and upright one, and devoid of hypocrisy and deceit; and as good an one
as theirs:
I am not inferior unto you: he was indeed as to estate and substance, being now
reduced; though he had been, in that sense, the greatest man in all the east; but in
wisdom and knowledge, in gifts and grace: thus a modest man, when oppressed and
insulted by the speeches of overbearing men, may be obliged and see it necessary to say
some things of himself, in his own vindication, which he otherwise would not; see 2Co_
11:15; or, "I am not falling before you"; or "by you" (e); as one intimidated, conquered,
and yielding; I stand my ground, and will not gave way or submit to you, or allow you to
have the superiority of me: or, "I am falling no more than you"; they took him for an
apostate from God, and the fear of him, and the true religion he had professed, which
Job denies; he held fast his integrity; and though he was fallen into calamities and
afflictions, he was not fallen from God; from his fear of him, faith in him, and love and
obedience to him; he was a holy, good man, a persevering saint; and though he had slips
and falls in common with good men, yet fell not finally and totally, or was an apostate
from the faith:
yea, who knoweth not such things as these? or, "with whom are not as these" (f)?
the things you have been discoursing of, which you would fain have pass for the secrets
of wisdom, deep and mysterious things, hid from vulgar eyes, which none have and

know but yourselves, are common things, what everyone is possessed of, and
understands as well as you; that there is a God that has made the world, and governs it;
that he himself is unsearchable, infinite and incomprehensible; a sovereign Being that
does according to his will and pleasure, and sees and knows all things, and does all
things well and wisely, and according to the counsel of his will: though some think Job
has reference not to what Zophar had been discoursing concerning the infinity and
wisdom of God, but to the thing or things in dispute between them, or to the assertions
of his friends; that it is always well with good men, and ill with bad men, or that wicked
men only are punished and afflicted, and particularly what Zophar concluded his speech
with, Job_11:20. Now these were vulgar notions, which the common people had taken
up, and were vulgar errors, as he proves in the following verses, by giving instances of
good men, being afflicted, and of bad men being in prosperity.
JAMISO , "not inferior — not vanquished in argument and “wisdom” (Job_13:2).
such things as these — such commonplace maxims as you so pompously adduce.
Job will not yield his equality with these friends and submit to them as superior to
himself. He is not being proud in stating his equality, for he goes on to say everyone
and every living thing on the planet knows the things you speak of. It is
commonplace knowledge known be instinct even by the animal kingdom. You guys
think you are so profound, but such thinking as your is to be everywhere found. Job
is humbling these friends of his by making it clear that what they are spouting is
kids stuff, and not great intellectual learning. You pretend you are speaking like
voices sent down from heaven, but all I hear is the common sense of every creature
with the tinest brain capacity. Job is really slamming his friends here and
puncturing their balloon of pride. It was common in the ancient world to store up
proverbs to quote to show you were wise and educated, but all of the common
proverbs were known by everyone, and so Job is saying your wisdom is that which
is know by all, and not some special revelation that makes you a step above everyone
else. All you know are the same commplace platitudes everyone who can talk are
spouting. It is not very hard to be on your level, and so it is no great boast to be
equal with you guys. In fact, it is putting yourself down to claim equality with you.
BE SO , "Job 12:3. But I have an understanding — Hebrew, a heart, which is
often put for the understanding: God hath given me also the knowledge and ability
to judge of these matters. I am not inferior to you — In these things; which he
speaks, not in a way of boasting, but for the just vindication both of himself and of
that cause of God, which, for the substance of it, he maintained rightly, as God
himself attests, Job 42:6. Who knoweth not such things — The truth is, neither you
nor I have any reason to be puffed up with our knowledge of these things; for the
most barbarous nations know that God is infinite in wisdom, and power, and
justice. But this is not the question between you and me.

Job 12 commentary

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Job 12 commentary