Context & Key Themes
Job responds to all three friends now, and his tone has sharpened considerably. He begins with sarcasm — no doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you — and continues with the assertion that he knows everything they know, and perhaps more. His response moves from the bitter observation that his friends mock him while the wicked prosper, to a sustained hymn of God’s sovereign power, to the conclusion that he intends to take his case directly to God rather than argue it before men who are not qualified to judge it. Chapter 12 establishes Job’s theological credentials: he is not a man who has lost his faith. He has lost his prosperity, his health, and his children — but not his knowledge of who God is.
Key Verse
“With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding.”
— Job 12:13
Summary
Job opens sharply: no doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you. But he has understanding as well as they do — he is not inferior to them, and who does not know these things? He is a laughingstock to his friends, though he called on God and God answered. The tent of robbers is at peace, and those who provoke God are secure. Ask the beasts and they will teach you, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea — all know that the hand of the LORD has done this. In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind. Does not the ear test words as the palate tastes food? Job then launches into one of the most comprehensive descriptions of God’s sovereign power in the book: he strips kings naked, looses the bonds of kings, leads counselors away stripped, pours contempt on princes, discloses the deep things of darkness, increases nations and then destroys them, takes away understanding from the chiefs of the people and makes them wander in trackless waste.
Reflection
The sarcasm in Job’s opening — no doubt wisdom will die with you — is earned. He has sat through three rounds of accusations from men who have diagnosed his condition without any of the information that would make their diagnosis valid. He knows the same things they know. He has applied the same theology they carry. And it does not explain what is happening to him. The difference between Job and his friends is not theological knowledge; it is experience. They have the map. He is in the terrain, and the terrain does not match the map, and they will not accept his report.
The hymn to God’s sovereignty that follows is not the theology of a man whose faith has collapsed. It is the declaration of someone who knows exactly who he is dealing with — which makes the silence and the suffering even more incomprehensible. Job does not disbelieve in God’s power. He is all too aware of it. His problem is not doubt about God’s existence or even God’s greatness. His problem is that he cannot fit what is happening to him inside any theological framework available to him, and the friends who claim to have the framework have not been where he is.