Wisdom Has Not Become the Friends’ Private Property

Job’s reply to Zophar runs through three chapters, 12 to 14, the longest speech yet, and it closes the first round of the debate. Each friend has now spoken once.

“Ye are the people” means you are everybody, the whole population of the wise, or perhaps “the people who count”. The sarcasm lies in the idea that understanding has no future beyond these three men.

“Understanding” is literally “a heart”. “I am not inferior to you” is “I do not fall below you”, a phrase Job repeats exactly in 13:2, as if once were not enough.

Job describes himself as the man who once called on God and was answered. “Laughed to scorn” uses sechoq, laughter, the very thing Bildad promised would fill Job’s mouth in 8:21. Instead Job has become the joke.

“A lamp” is lappid, a torch. Many read the letters differently, as “for misfortune”, giving “the comfortable hold misfortune in contempt; it waits for those whose feet slip.” Either way, ease looks down on the stumbling.

“Tabernacles” are tents again. The last clause can be read “who carry their god in their hand”, men whose god is their own fist or weapon, the attitude Habakkuk 1:11 describes: “imputing this his power unto his god”.

The verbs here are singular, “ask thou”, as if Job is quoting or parodying one friend’s kind of advice. The LORD will later take Job on exactly this tour, through lion, raven, goat, wild ass and eagle, in chapters 38 and 39.

The Hebrew for “speak to the earth” uses siach, which can also mean a shrub, so some read “the plants of the earth”. Beasts, birds, earth and fish together make the realms over which man is given rule in Genesis 1:26.

This is the only place in the whole dialogue, chapters 3 to 37, where the covenant name, the LORD, appears, and some manuscripts even here read Eloah. The line matches Isaiah 41:20 almost exactly: “that the hand of the LORD hath done this”.

“Soul” is nephesh, the life of every creature, and “breath” is ruach. “All mankind” is literally “all flesh of man”. The pair recalls Genesis 7:22, “all in whose nostrils was the breath of life”.

“Try” is bachan, the assayer’s word for testing metal. “Meat” is any food. The question expects yes: Job keeps the right to taste what the friends set before him and spit it out.

“The ancient” are yeshishim, the aged, a word used only in Job. The line may be a proverb the friends like, which Job then corrects in the next verse; it can also be read as a question, “Is wisdom with the aged?”

With him, not with the aged: wisdom, might, counsel and understanding. The same four gifts rest on the shoot from Jesse in Isaiah 11:2, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might”.

“Breaketh down” is the verb for demolishing a wall or a city. “He shutteth up a man” is the language of imprisonment. Isaiah 22:22 gives the same pair in hope, “he shall shut, and none shall open”; here it is a cell with no key.

“Overturn” is haphak, the verb for the overthrow of Sodom (Genesis 19:25). Drought and flood come from the same hand and the same water, held back or let go.

“Wisdom” is tushiyyah again, sound sense, the word of 5:12 and 6:13. “The deceived and the deceiver” are literally “the one who strays and the one who leads astray”, from the verb shagah, which Job used of his own possible errors in 6:24.

“Spoiled” means stripped, perhaps barefoot, the condition of captives marched away (Micah 1:8). “Maketh the judges fools” uses the verb for madness, the one used when David feigned insanity at Gath (1 Samuel 21:13).

The bond of kings may be their authority, or the fetters they put on others. The girdle they end up wearing is ezor, a loincloth, the waist rag of a prisoner. The binders become the bound.

“Princes” is literally kohanim, priests; the King James softened it. “The mighty” are etanim, the long established, a word used of streams that never dry. Neither the altar nor old wealth keeps a man in place.

“The trusty” are the reliable advisers whose word was relied upon. “Understanding” is taam, taste, the same discernment of the palate as verse 11. God can take the taste out of an old man’s judgment.

Psalm 107:40 quotes this line word for word, and then continues with the second half of verse 24. “Weakeneth the strength of the mighty” is literally “loosens the belt of the strong”, ungirding a man for work or battle.

“Discovereth” meant uncovers in 1611. The shadow of death, tsalmaveth, is the darkness Job wanted to cover his birth night with in 3:5; here God drags it into the light. Daniel 2:22 praises God in similar words: “he revealeth the deep and secret things.”

The verb behind “straiteneth” can mean “leads away”, as captives into exile. Ancient empires deported whole peoples, and the line may picture a nation swelling to greatness and then marched off.

“A wilderness where there is no way” uses tohu, the word for the formless earth of Genesis 1:2. Leaders who have lost their heart, meaning their reason, are sent into a trackless waste like the world before creation.

“Grope” is mashash, the verb Eliphaz used in 5:14 for schemers groping at noon. Job hands the image to rulers. Isaiah 19:14 pictures Egypt’s princes the same way, staggering like a drunken man.