Job 12

Job answers Zophar with biting irony. He says his friends are no wiser than he is, and that the guilty often prosper while the righteous are mocked. Then he describes God’s sovereign power over nature, rulers and nations, and the hand that lifts up and brings down.

Job 12:1-2

Job opens with sarcasm. His friends have talked as if they own all wisdom, so he says that when they die, wisdom will die with them. He is not praising them. He is pricking their pride.

BSA: wisdom (“skill, prudence, or good judgment”): Wisdom here means practical good judgment, which Job says his friends have not shown in how they treat him.

Job 12:3

Job insists he is no fool. He has a mind of his own and knows everything they have said about God’s justice. Their speeches have told him nothing new. His pain is not caused by ignorance of the basics.

BSA: mind (“heart, innermost being”): In Hebrew thought the heart is the seat of thinking, so Job claims real understanding, not only feeling.

Job 12:4

Job is mocked by the very friends he once helped. He called on God, and God answered him in the past. Now the blameless man is a joke. The bitter reversal of his life is what he cannot make sense of.

BSA: laughingstock (“a mockery, object of scorn”): Job has become a public object of ridicule, and the word is repeated for emphasis. upright (“blameless, perfect”): Job holds that he is blameless in his walk, which is exactly what makes his treatment so puzzling to him.

See also: Job 1:1.

Job 12:5

People who are comfortable look down on those who suffer. They treat trouble as something the unlucky deserve, as if a slipping foot proves a bad life. Job feels this contempt from his friends.

BSA: scorns (“with contempt, despises”): The comfortable do more than ignore the suffering. They look down on them.

Job 12:6

Job points to what everyone can see. Violent men live in safety, and those who defy God feel secure. Their only god is their own strength, held in their hands. So the friends’ neat rule, that the wicked always suffer, does not fit the facts.

BSA: robbers (“those who ruin and devastate”): These are not petty thieves. They are men who wreck lives and still prosper. hands (“an open hand; strength, a side or share”): Their power is their god, so they trust the strength of their own hand.

See also: Psalm 73:3-5; Habakkuk 1:11.

Job 12:7-8

Job sends his friends to school with the creatures. Animals, birds, the earth and the fish all show that God rules. Even without books or tradition, creation teaches who is in charge.

BSA: instruct (“teach, show”): Creation itself becomes a teacher, pointing silently to its Maker.

See also: Romans 1:20; Psalm 19:1-2.

Job 12:9

Every creature shows that the LORD made it. This is the only place in the poem where Job uses God’s personal covenant name, the LORD. The point is that the friends are not teaching him anything. Everyone knows that God is behind what happens.

BSA: LORD (“Yehovah, the Lord God”): This is God’s personal name, which draws attention to the God who is near and acts.

Job 12:10

Every living thing, and every human breath, is held in God’s hand. Our lives are not our own possession. Job believes this firmly, and that is why his suffering troubles him so much. God is in control, so he wants to know why.

BSA: breath (“spirit, life-giving air”): Each breath is a gift God gives and can take back.

See also: Acts 17:25; Daniel 5:23.

Job 12:11

Job says we test words just as the mouth tests food. We should not swallow whatever we are served. He is asking his friends to let him judge their arguments, and he finds them tasteless.

BSA: test (“examine, prove”): Careful listening means weighing what is said before accepting it.

Job 12:12

Job grants that age often brings wisdom. His friends lean on the wisdom of old men. But his next words show the limit of this. The old have learned much, but their wisdom is small beside God’s.

BSA: understanding (“insight, discretion”): Understanding is the ability to see into things, which long experience can sharpen.

Job 12:13

Real wisdom and strength belong to God. Human counsel is borrowed and limited. Job turns the friends’ appeal to tradition into worship. God has what we only have in part, and he alone has both the wisdom to plan and the power to carry it out.

BSA: counsel (“advice, plan, or purpose”): God’s counsel is his settled purpose, which no one can overturn.

See also: Romans 11:33; Proverbs 8:14.

Job 12:14

What God pulls down, no one can rebuild. Whom he shuts in, no one can free. Job is not praising this. He feels it. He feels like a man torn down and locked up, with no one able to open the door.

BSA: imprisons (“shuts up, confines”): The picture is of a door closed by God, which Job feels shut on him.

See also: Revelation 3:7.

Job 12:15

God controls the waters. If he holds them back, drought comes. If he lets them go, flood comes. Nature is not neutral. It is a tool in his hand, and it can bring both blessing and ruin.

BSA: overwhelm (“overturn, flood”): The same water that gives life can turn the land upside down when God releases it.

See also: 1 Kings 17:1; Genesis 7:11-12.

Job 12:16

Strength and sound wisdom are his. So are those who are misled and those who mislead. Both fall under his rule. This does not make God the author of sin. It says that no one stands outside his authority.

BSA: wisdom (“support, ability, or understanding, often implying sound knowledge or efficient wisdom”): This is wisdom that works and succeeds, not just thought. deceiver (“one who leads others astray, intentionally or unintentionally”): Even those who lead others astray remain under God’s authority.

Job 12:17

God humbles the wise of this world. Counselors are led off as captives, barefoot and stripped of dignity, and judges are made to look like fools. Those who are trusted to give wisdom can be left without any.

BSA: barefoot (“naked, without wisdom”): Captives were marched away stripped of their dignity, and the word pictures complete humiliation.

Hebrew: שׁוֹלָל (shôlāl, H7758) — “stripped, barefoot.” The Hebrew describes a captive taken away stripped of his clothes or sandals, a picture of total loss of status.

See also: 1 Corinthians 1:27.

Job 12:18

God can loosen the chains kings put on others, and put a plain belt on the kings themselves. Rulers can be dethroned and bound like servants. Some read it as God also freeing the captives. Either way, he rules over the rulers.

BSA: belt (“girdle, loincloth”): A simple cloth belt marks a servant or prisoner, in place of royal robes.

Job 12:19

Even priests, whose place seems secure, are led away barefoot. Those who seem firmly established are overthrown. No office, religious or political, gives protection from God’s hand.

BSA: established (“strong, mighty, permanent ones”): Those who looked permanent and unshakable are not safe from God.

Job 12:20

God can take the speech from trusted advisers and the judgment from the old. The very people others rely on for words and good sense can lose them. Human wisdom depends on God’s continuing gift.

BSA: discernment (“understanding, judgment, taste”): The Hebrew word suggests the sense of taste, a sound feel for what is right, which God can withdraw.

Job 12:21

God pours contempt on nobles and takes the strength from the mighty. The proud who looked down on others, as Job was looked down on, find that scorn falls on them. This gives Job some quiet comfort.

BSA: disarms (“weakens, loosens the belt of”): A warrior’s belt held his weapons and strength, so loosening it leaves him helpless.

See also: Luke 1:52; Psalm 107:40.

Job 12:22

God knows what is hidden. He brings deep darkness and the shadow of death into the light. Nothing is secret from him, not the hidden plots of men or the deepest places of the world.

BSA: deep shadows (“the shadow of death, profound distress”): This is the darkest gloom a person can imagine, and even it is open to God.

See also: Daniel 2:22; Hebrews 4:13.

Job 12:23

Nations rise and fall at God’s word. He lets them grow great and then brings them to ruin. He spreads them wide and later scatters them. History is not a random tide. It moves under his hand.

BSA: disperses (“leads captive, scatters”): A nation can be taken from its land and scattered abroad.

See also: Daniel 2:21; Acts 17:26.

Job 12:24-25

God takes away the reason of the world’s leaders and leaves them lost in a pathless waste. They feel their way in the dark and stagger like drunks. The mighty are helpless when God withdraws their sense. Job ends facing a power that no one can resist.

BSA: reason (“understanding, heart, intellect”): Leaders lose the heart or mind that guides them. stagger (“to go astray”): Without God’s guidance, even the powerful wander and fall.

See also: Isaiah 19:13-14.