Job Chapter 12
Job’s Sarcastic Reply
A. Job complains about his friends.
1. (Job 12:1–3) Job sarcastically answers Zophar and his other friends.
“And Job answered and said,
No doubt but ye are the people,
and wisdom shall die with you.
But I have understanding as well as you;
I am not inferior to you:
yea, who knoweth not such things as these?” (Job 12:1–3, KJV)
a. No doubt but ye are the people: Job responds with biting sarcasm. His friends have spoken as though they alone possess wisdom and insight, as though God has entrusted truth exclusively to them. Job exposes the arrogance beneath their speeches by exaggerating their self importance. The phrase wisdom shall die with you drips with irony, highlighting how absurd their posture has become. Job is wounded, but he is not irrational. His sarcasm is a moral protest against their presumption.
b. But I have understanding as well as you, I am not inferior to you: Job rebukes the assumption that suffering equals ignorance or moral inferiority. He insists that he possesses the same intellectual and theological capacity as his friends. Their speeches have not enlightened him, because they have told him nothing new. Job refuses to accept the role of the ignorant sinner being lectured by spiritual elites.
c. Yea, who knoweth not such things as these: Job exposes the superficiality of their theology. The principles they have repeated are not profound revelations but common sayings, widely known and easily recited. Their speeches rely on stock religious phrases rather than thoughtful engagement with his actual condition. Job’s frustration is not with theology itself, but with theology reduced to slogans and used without discernment.
2. (Job 12:4–6) Job’s complaint, “My friends mock and misunderstand me.”
“I am as one mocked of his neighbour,
who calleth upon God, and he answereth him:
the just upright man is laughed to scorn.
He that is ready to slip with his feet
is as a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at ease.
The tabernacles of robbers prosper,
and they that provoke God are secure;
into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.” (Job 12:4–6, KJV)
a. I am as one mocked of his neighbour: Job describes the added cruelty of his suffering. He is not only afflicted by calamity but ridiculed by those who should have supported him. He emphasizes that this mockery comes despite his history of prayer and communion with God. He is not an atheist, not a rebel, not a hypocrite, yet he is treated as an object of scorn. The just upright man is laughed to scorn reveals the moral outrage Job feels, righteousness has become a reason for ridicule.
This unjust mockery foreshadows the suffering of Christ, who was also mocked while remaining perfectly righteous. “And they platted a crown of thorns, and put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!” (Matthew 27:29, KJV). “Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said,” (Matthew 27:41, KJV). Job’s experience anticipates the pattern of righteous suffering that finds its ultimate expression at the cross.
b. He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised: Job uses a vivid metaphor. A lamp is only valued in darkness. Those who live at ease despise the lamp because they feel no need for it. Job implies that his friends, secure and comfortable, cannot understand the value of faith tested by suffering. When someone stumbles, instead of offering light, they treat him with contempt. His friends’ prosperity has blinded them to compassion.
c. The tabernacles of robbers prosper: Job confronts the central flaw in his friends’ theology. In the real world, the wicked often prosper while the righteous suffer. Those who provoke God appear secure, and God’s providence seems, at least outwardly, to sustain them. Job is not denying God’s sovereignty, but he is denying the simplistic formula that righteousness always brings immediate blessing and wickedness always brings immediate judgment.
Job is forced to abandon his former creed, not his faith. His old framework cannot account for what he sees. As he observes the success of the wicked and the humiliation of the righteous, he realizes that reality is more complex than his friends’ rigid system allows. Job does not reject God, but he rejects the shallow explanations offered in God’s name.
B. Job explains his understanding of God’s ways.
1. (Job 12:7–12) All creation knows the power of God.
“But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee;
and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:
Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee:
and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.
Who knoweth not in all these
that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?
In whose hand is the soul of every living thing,
and the breath of all mankind.
Doth not the ear try words?
and the mouth taste his meat?
With the ancient is wisdom;
and in length of days understanding.” (Job 12:7–12, KJV)
a. But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee: Job develops the rebuke he began earlier, that the theology of his friends is neither profound nor exclusive. He argues that the truths they parade as deep wisdom are so basic that all of creation testifies to them. Animals, birds, the earth, and even fish bear witness to the power and providence of God. Job is not diminishing theology, but he is exposing shallow theology that ignores lived reality. If creation itself recognizes God’s sovereign hand, then Zophar’s lectures add nothing of substance.
Job’s point is devastatingly simple. The friends speak as if Job denies God’s power, when in fact the evidence of that power is universally known. Their accusations collapse under their own weight. Job does not need instruction in elementary truths that even the beasts understand instinctively.
b. That the hand of the LORD hath wrought this: Job explicitly attributes all life and sustenance to the LORD. Everything that lives does so because God sustains it. The breath of all mankind is in His hand. This is a confession of divine sovereignty as strong as anything spoken by Job’s friends. Job is not ignorant of God’s rule over creation, he affirms it openly and unapologetically. The rarity of the divine name in the poetry only heightens its force here, drawing attention to Job’s reverence and theological clarity.
c. Doth not the ear try words, and the mouth taste his meat: Job appeals to common sense. Just as taste distinguishes food and the ear discerns sound, so truth can be recognized. Wisdom is not merely inherited from tradition nor monopolized by age, yet Job acknowledges that experience often brings understanding. The irony is sharp. His friends are older and confident, yet blind to what is happening before their eyes. Job implies that discernment must be exercised honestly, not filtered through rigid assumptions.
2. (Job 12:13–25) Job describes the great power of God.
“With him is wisdom and strength,
he hath counsel and understanding.
Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again:
he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.
Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up:
also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.
With him is strength and wisdom:
the deceived and the deceiver are his.
He leadeth counsellors away spoiled,
and maketh the judges fools.
He looseth the bond of kings,
and girdeth their loins with a girdle.
He leadeth princes away spoiled,
and overthroweth the mighty.
He removeth away the speech of the trusty,
and taketh away the understanding of the aged.
He poureth contempt upon princes,
and weakeneth the strength of the mighty.
He discovereth deep things out of darkness,
and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.
He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them:
he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.
He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth,
and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.
They grope in the dark without light,
and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.” (Job 12:13–25, KJV)
a. With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding: Job directly answers Zophar’s charge that he does not understand God. Job affirms that true wisdom, strength, counsel, and understanding belong to God alone. Far from denying this, Job places it at the center of his theology. His suffering has not erased his reverence for God’s greatness. What he rejects is the misuse of these truths to accuse him falsely.
b. Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again: Job poetically catalogs the scope of God’s power. God’s authority extends over material creation, human freedom, natural forces, and human institutions. What God destroys cannot be rebuilt by man. When He restrains, no one can release. When He withholds waters, drought follows, and when He releases them, floods overwhelm the earth. Job shows that God’s power is not selective or limited, it is absolute and comprehensive.
God’s dominion also extends to human wisdom and authority. Counselors are led away spoiled, judges are exposed as fools, kings are stripped of power, princes are humiliated, and the mighty are overthrown. Eloquence, experience, and political strength all fail when God withdraws understanding. Even deception itself does not escape His rule, for both the deceived and the deceiver are His.
c. He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth: Job reaches the climax of his reflection by showing how easily God can remove understanding from leaders and leave them wandering without direction. Without divine illumination, even the most powerful grope in darkness and stagger like drunken men. Human wisdom is not self sustaining. It exists only by God’s allowance.
There is a deeply personal note here. Job is not speaking abstractly. He describes what it feels like to live without understanding, to wander in a wilderness where there is no way, to grope in the dark without light. Job recognizes himself in this description. His suffering has left him disoriented, not faithless, but searching. By describing God’s power in this way, Job defends himself against the accusation of ignorance while honestly confessing the limits of human understanding before an all powerful God.
