Job 12: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Job answers his three friends with sarcasm, telling them their advice is common knowledge and that he is not their inferior. He says he has become a laughingstock even though he called on God and God answered, while robbers live in safety. He then points to the animals, birds, earth, and fish as witnesses that the LORD's hand controls all life, and gives a long list of God's power to build up and tear down kings, judges, counselors, priests, and whole nations.

Claim by Claim

1. 12:1
   • Job answered.
   • Job spoke.
2. 12:2
   • Job said to his hearers that they are indeed the people who matter.
   • Job said that wisdom will die with them.
3. 12:3
   • Job said he has understanding just as they do.
   • Job said he is not inferior to them.
   • Job asked who does not know things such as these.
4. 12:4
   • Job said he has become a laughingstock to his friend.
   • Job said he is one who called on God and was answered by Him.
   • Job said the righteous and blameless man is laughed to scorn.
5. 12:5
   • The man who is at ease holds calamity in contempt.
   • That contempt is ready for those whose feet are slipping.
   • It is ambiguous whether the thing despised is a lamp or a misfortune.
6. 12:6
   • The tents of robbers are at peace.
   • Those who provoke God are secure.
   • It is ambiguous whether the last clause says God brings abundance into their hand or that they carry their god in their hand.
7. 12:7
   • Job told his hearer to ask the beasts.
   • Job said the beasts will teach him.
   • Job told his hearer to ask the birds of the sky.
   • Job said the birds will tell him.
8. 12:8
   • Job told his hearer to speak to the earth.
   • Job said the earth will teach him.
   • Job said the fish of the sea will declare to him.
9. 12:9
   • Job asked who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this.
10. 12:10
    • The life of every living thing is in the LORD's hand.
    • The breath of all human flesh is in the LORD's hand.
11. 12:11
    • The ear tests words.
    • The palate tastes food for itself.
12. 12:12
    • Wisdom is with aged men.
    • Understanding comes with length of days.
13. 12:13
    • With God are wisdom and might.
    • To God belong counsel and understanding.
14. 12:14
    • When God tears down, it cannot be rebuilt.
    • When God shuts a man in, there is no opening.
15. 12:15
    • When God holds back the waters, they dry up.
    • When God sends the waters out, they overturn the land.
16. 12:16
    • With God are strength and sound wisdom.
    • The one who is deceived belongs to God.
    • The one who deceives belongs to God.
17. 12:17
    • God leads counselors away stripped.
    • God makes judges into fools.
18. 12:18
    • God loosens the bond imposed by kings.
    • God binds a waistcloth on the loins of kings.
19. 12:19
    • God leads priests away stripped.
    • God overthrows those who are firmly established.
20. 12:20
    • God removes the speech of trusted men.
    • God takes away the discernment of elders.
21. 12:21
    • God pours contempt on nobles.
    • God loosens the belt of the strong.
22. 12:22
    • God uncovers deep things out of darkness.
    • God brings deep shadow out into the light.
23. 12:23
    • God makes nations great.
    • God destroys nations.
    • God spreads nations out.
    • God leads nations away.
24. 12:24
    • God takes away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth.
    • God makes them wander in a trackless waste.
25. 12:25
    • They grope in darkness without light.
    • God makes them stagger like a drunken man.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

12:1

Job is replying to his three friends, who have argued through several rounds of speeches that his suffering must be punishment for some sin. "Answered" here means answered back in a formal debate, not answered a question.

12:2

Heavy sarcasm. "You are the people" means something like "you are the ones who count, the whole of humanity that matters", and when you go, human wisdom goes with you.

12:3

The KJV's "understanding" translates a Hebrew word literally meaning "heart," which in Hebrew is the seat of thought and judgment rather than of feeling. Job is saying he has a mind as good as theirs.

12:4

In 1611 English "mocked of his neighbour" means mocked BY his neighbor; "of" regularly meant "by" after a passive verb. The bitterness is that Job was once a man whose prayers God answered, and that is exactly what now makes him a joke.

12:5

The Hebrew of this verse is broken and uncertain, and translations differ widely. The KJV supplies "lamp" from a word that can also be read as "disaster" or "misfortune." The general sense most translators settle on is that people who are safe and comfortable have contempt for the ruin of others.

12:6

"Tabernacles" in the KJV simply means tents or dwellings; it has nothing to do with the tabernacle of the Israelite worship. The last line is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean that God fills their hands with good things, or that these men carry their god in their own hand: that is, their strength is the only god they have.

12:7

Calling on the natural world as a witness was a standard move in ancient wisdom writing. Job uses it as an insult: the doctrine his friends are so pleased with is so obvious that the birds and the fish could recite it back to them.

12:9

"LORD" in small capitals is the standard way English Bibles mark the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written Yahweh, rather than the ordinary word for "god." This is the only place in the long cycle of speeches between Job and his friends where that name appears; elsewhere they use general words for God.

12:10

"Soul" here translates a Hebrew word meaning life, or the living self, not a separate spiritual part of a person. Paired with "breath," it means simply that everything alive is alive on loan.

12:11

A proverb about testing: just as the mouth judges whether food is good, the ear is supposed to judge whether an argument is any good. Job is inviting his friends to apply that test to what they have been saying.

12:12

This line reads as a well-worn saying, age brings wisdom. Hebrew has no quotation marks, so it is disputed whether Job is stating it, quoting it back at his elderly friends, or asking it sarcastically as a question before answering in the next verse that wisdom actually belongs to God alone.

12:14

Shutting a man in means locking him up in prison so he cannot get out.

12:15

In that hot, dry land, rain and rivers were everything. With no water, plants died and people had no food.

12:17

"Away spoiled" means stripped, led off barefoot and without possessions. This is the standard ancient picture of prisoners of war marched away by their captors. Counselors and judges were the men whose whole standing rested on being wise; God makes fools of them.

12:18

Deliberately double-edged in Hebrew. It can mean God loosens the chains kings put on their prisoners, or that he unties the sash of royal office from the king himself and ties on the plain cloth of a slave or captive instead. A belt or sash was a mark of rank and of readiness for action.

12:19

The Hebrew word here is "priests"; the KJV's "princes" reflects the fact that the word could also cover high officials of state. Either way, these are men at the top of the social order being led off like captives.

12:20

"The trusty" are trusted advisers, the men whose word a community relied on. "The aged" are the elders, the older men who settled disputes and gave counsel at the town gate; taking away their judgment leaves a community with no one to guide it.

12:21

The second line is literally "he loosens the belt of the strong." A tightened belt held up a man's robes so he could fight or run; a loosened one left him unable to move freely, the image is of a warrior disarmed.

12:22

"The shadow of death" translates one Hebrew word that means deep or total darkness. The KJV's phrase comes from an old way of dividing the word into "shadow" plus "death"; most modern translators read it simply as the thickest possible dark.

12:23

"Straiteneth" is 1611 English for hems in, confines, or squeezes narrow, the opposite of the "enlarges" in the same line. The Hebrew word can also carry the sense of leading a people away into exile.

12:24

"Taketh away the heart" again uses "heart" in the Hebrew sense of mind and judgment, not emotion: God strips national leaders of the ability to think straight. The wilderness with no way is trackless desert, where a traveler has no road to follow and no landmarks.