Jobchapter 12
25 verses · BSBJob book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 107×3Job 13×2Job 17×2Psalms 17×2Job 9×2Acts 17×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Job's answer to Zophar opens in scorn: 'no doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you' (12:2). He is a laughingstock to his neighbor, a just and perfect man laughed to scorn, while 'the tents of robbers prosper.' Ask now the beasts, the birds, the fishes: they will teach thee that the hand of Jehovah wrought this; in his hand is the soul of every living thing. Then Job out-preaches his friends on sovereignty and turns it terrible: he looses the bond of kings, leads counsellors away stripped, pours contempt upon princes, 'discovereth deep things out of darkness,' increases nations and destroys them.
Context
Poetry · Unknown — Job overview
- A. 1–12 Job: No Doubt Ye Are the People, and Wisdom Shall Die With You
- B. 13–25 Job: With God Is Wisdom — He Poureth Contempt Upon Princes
The outline
A.Job: No Doubt Ye Are the People, and Wisdom Shall Die With Youvv. 1 to 12
Read vv. 1 to 12 →B.Job: With God Is Wisdom — He Poureth Contempt Upon Princesvv. 13 to 25
Read vv. 13 to 25 →
The world behind this chapter
Job 12The history
Job opens with the sharpest sarcasm in the book: no doubt you are the people, and wisdom shall die with you. He tells them he is not inferior to them and that what they have said is common knowledge — who does not know such things as these?
His answer is to send them to school with the animals. Ask the beasts, the birds, the earth, the fish — even they know that the hand of the LORD has done this. It is a deliberate insult to men who had just cited visions and ancestral tradition: creation itself teaches what you needed a night-terror to learn.
The hymn that follows is the reverse of the friends' God. Job describes a God who overthrows the arrangements men trust: he looses the bond of kings and ties a rope around their waists, leads priests away stripped, overthrows the mighty, takes away the speech of trusted counsellors and the judgment of elders, pours contempt on princes, and weakens the strong. Every line in that list is what a conquering army did to a captured city's leadership — the officials stripped and roped in a line, the priests marched off, the elders silenced. Anyone in the ancient Near East had seen it or heard of it.
He also names deceiver and deceived as both belonging to God, and says he enlarges nations and destroys them. This is not comfort. It is Job saying that God's power is not in doubt and is not the question; the question is what he is doing with it.
What it meant to them
The friends had used God's greatness to shut Job up. Job uses the same greatness to open the case wider: a God who topples kings is not a God whose ways can be read off a simple rule about the righteous prospering.
For hearers who had watched nations disappear, this was recognisable and unsettling. Job is not less orthodox than his friends. He is more, and it is costing him more.
Sources cited
- Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job
- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 12. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.