Job 12:11

These verses come from Job’s long reply in Job 12–14 to Zophar, whose speech in Job 11 had accused him. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar all hold that suffering comes as a direct result of sin, so they reason backwards from Job’s losses to some hidden guilt. Job has already mocked their claim to wisdom (Job 12:2). Now he turns it against them with biting irony: if they want to learn about God, the animals could teach them.

The book is set in the land of Uz, which probably lay east of Israel, among people who prized wisdom drawn from watching the natural world, from experience and from the sayings of their fathers. Job draws on that habit of learning from nature, and what the creatures teach is the very thing his friends are missing. God’s power and wisdom are greater than their tidy scheme of cause and effect, and his ways are often past our understanding. God makes the same point at far greater length when he answers Job from the whirlwind in Job 38–41, with the question “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

Job names the whole living world in four parts: the beasts of the land, the fowls of the air, the earth itself and the fishes of the sea. The list runs from the animals people see every day to the fish hidden in the deep, so the witness reaches into every part of creation, including places human eyes rarely reach.

The verbs are the language of a classroom. “Ask” is shâʼal, the ordinary verb to ask, inquire or request. “Teach”, in verse 7 and again in verse 8, is the same verb, yârâh, whose root means to throw, shoot or lay, and which also means to point out and so to teach. “Tell” in verse 7 is nâgad, to set something out in front of a person and so to make it known or announce it. In verse 8 “speak” is sîyach, to ponder or muse and so to talk a thing over, aloud or with oneself. Speaking to the earth means looking at it thoughtfully and turning over what it shows. “Declare” is çâphar, to count or number, and in its intensive form to recount, tell or declare, so the fishes recount the work of their Maker.

The animals and the earth teach by what they are: their design, their ways and the order of their lives. Scripture says the same of the sky: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1–4). Isaiah asks who has measured the waters and the heavens, and who ever taught the LORD or gave him counsel, questions that leave God alone as the wise Maker of all (Isaiah 40:12–14).

Verse 9 gathers the four witnesses into one question: “Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?” “All these” are the beasts, birds, earth and fish of the two verses before, and the question expects the answer that everyone knows it. “Knoweth” is yâdaʻ, the common verb to know, perceive or be acquainted with, which covers everything from simple observation to close understanding. Here it is the kind of knowledge anyone can gain by looking at the world, with or without learning.

“The hand of the LORD”, yad-Yᵉhôvâh, joins yâd, the open hand, which often stands for power, means or direction, to Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God that the KJV prints as “the LORD”. With a preposition, “by the hand of” marks anyone through whom a thing is done, and when the hand is God’s own, the phrase speaks of his power at work, in creation, judgment and deliverance. “Wrought” is ʻâsâh, to do or make in the broadest sense. Everything Job has pointed to was made by God, is kept by him and goes the way he directs.

The question carries a rebuke. The friends claim deep wisdom about God, yet they treat his governance as simple enough to read off Job’s losses. Job answers that God’s power over all things is common knowledge, and that the God whose hand made every creature is far too great for their scheme. Nebuchadnezzar confessed that God does according to his will in heaven and on earth, “and none can stay his hand” (Daniel 4:35), and through Isaiah the LORD says that he forms the light and creates darkness (Isaiah 45:7). For Job, this means that his own trials are also under that hand.

Verse 10 moves from what God made to what he holds now: “In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.” The two halves match, the first speaking of every creature and the second narrowing to humankind.

“Soul” is nephesh, which comes from a verb meaning to breathe and means a breathing creature, its life, its self. “Living” is chay, alive, and “every living thing” takes in all that lives. “Breath” is rûwach, which means wind, breath or spirit, and in “the breath of all mankind” it is the breath of life that God gives to people. It recalls the moment when God breathed into the man he had formed the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). The psalmist says that when God takes away the breath of his creatures they die, and when he sends forth his spirit he renews the face of the earth (Psalm 104:29–30). Paul told the Athenians that God “giveth to all life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:25), and that “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

So life is a gift God keeps giving. Every creature lives because God holds its life, and he is able both to give it and to take it back. People ask whether this means God governs every breath of every person. It means that he is the source of every life and upholds it at every moment. Creatures live by the order he set in the world, and the very capacity to live comes from him, a steady and close care that sustains all he made.

Verse 11 asks two short questions: “Doth not the ear try words? and the mouth taste his meat?” Both expect the answer yes. Everyone tastes food before swallowing it, and in the same way the ear is meant to weigh what it hears.

“Try” is bâchan, to test, examine or prove, as a refiner tests metal or a judge examines evidence. “Taste” is ṭâʻam, to perceive flavour and so to judge what is good to eat and what would do harm. “Words” is millâh, which means a word, or taken together a discourse or a matter, and belongs to the language of poetry. Here the words are the counsel and arguments of the friends, and Job’s own words too. Job asks them to weigh their speeches, and his, as carefully as they would judge a mouthful of food, and to listen to him before they condemn him. Proverbs calls it folly and shame to answer a matter before hearing it (Proverbs 18:13).

The rest of Scripture asks the same of us. Paul writes, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and Hebrews speaks of mature believers “who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14). Jesus said, “Take heed what ye hear” (Mark 4:24), and John tells us to “try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). Testing belongs to the Bible’s whole idea of wisdom, which is skill in living and the ability to tell truth from falsehood and the wise from the foolish. Proverbs calls wisdom the principal thing (Proverbs 4:7) and says that purposes are established by a multitude of counsellors (Proverbs 15:22), and Paul prays that believers may “approve things that are excellent” (Philippians 1:10).

Verse 12, which opens a new paragraph in the KJV, states a saying that everyone in Job’s world would accept: “With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.” “The ancient” is yâshîysh, an old man, one who is aged. The elders were honoured as keepers of the community’s wisdom, and they served as judges, teachers and counsellors. “Wisdom” is chokmâh, the practical skill of living well, sound judgment put into action. “Understanding” is tâbûwn, intelligence and discernment, the ability to grasp how things fit together. “Length of days” joins ʼôrek, length, with yôwm, day, and together they mean a long life or old age.

The two halves of the verse say the same thing in different words, and Job grants it as common ground with his friends. His very next words set it beside something higher: “With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding” (Job 12:13). Wisdom gathered over a long life is real, and God’s wisdom is far greater and past our searching. The saying also has an edge in Job’s mouth. His friends lean on the wisdom of age, and their counsel has failed him, so the proverb shows the limits of what human years can teach when the question is God’s dealings with a suffering man. The book takes up the question of where wisdom is found in the great poem of Job 28.

The New Testament shows us the One through whom the hand of the LORD did all this. The Word was with God and was God (John 1:1), and “all things were made by him” (John 1:3). Paul says that by him were all things created, visible and invisible, and that by him all things consist (Colossians 1:16–17). Hebrews calls him “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person”, who upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). So the creatures of verses 7 and 8 were made through the Son, and the hand that holds every breath in verse 10 is his hand as well.

When Jesus taught, he often pointed to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and so creation still teaches us about God’s kingdom and his care. In his ministry he showed his rule over creation and over life and death, stilling the storm with a word (Mark 4:39) and calling Lazarus out of the tomb (John 11:43–44). After his resurrection he said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18), and in him God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).

He also gives eternal life. He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and he came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10).

The wisdom that stands above the years of the ancient is found in Christ, “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), in whom “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). That wisdom reached us through Christ crucified (1 Corinthians 1:23), and it is God’s answer to sin and suffering. Verse 11 speaks of testing words and tasting food, and Jesus gives both words and food that stand every test. Peter said to him, “thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68), and Jesus said, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

These verses give us a world full of witnesses. Every animal, bird and fish, and the ground itself, tells of the hand of the LORD that made it, and the humble attention Job asks for leads to awe and worship of the One who made them. The same verses tell us that each breath we draw is God’s gift, held in his hand, and that the hand which holds it also rules over the trials we cannot explain. Job could confess that hand while his friends’ answers failed him.

Job’s question about the ear gives us a way of listening as well. Words about God, our own among them, are weighed the way the mouth tastes food, and the measure is the truth God has made known. Age and long experience deserve honour, and above them stands the God with whom is wisdom and strength, whose wisdom has come to us in his Son.