Job 12:7

JOB APPEALED TO THE LOWER CREATIONS AS SUPPORTERS OF HIS GRAND PROPOSITION IN JOB 12:6

"But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee;

And the birds of the heavens, and they shall teach 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 Jehovah 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,

Even as the palate tasteth food?

With aged men is wisdom,

And in length of days understanding."

What Job declared here was so clearly the truth that only a fool could have denied it. "In the whole creation, the strong prey on the weak, the fierce upon the tame, and the violent upon the timid. God does not intervene to destroy the lion, the tiger, and the wolfe, and to deliver the lambs and the chickens![8]

"And the birds of the heavens" (Job 12:7). The hawks and the eagles are not forbidden to prey upon the small and the weak.

"And the fishes of the sea" (Job 12:8). Do the big ones ever protect the little ones? The sharks and the barracudas are always as busy as they can be eating up the smaller fishes!

"Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee" (Job 12:8). Every farmer knows that all of the good crops must suffer from the encroachments of the crab grass, the ragweeds, the cockleburs, the Johnson grass, thistles, briars and grass-spurs. And Job's observation here is that all of these conditions reflect quite accurately the situation as it exists among men also. Is it the lambs, the doves, and the good crops, along with the righteous man, who are always blessed; and do the disasters always fall upon the wolves, the sharks, the hawks, the weeds, and the robbers? Certainly not!

"The hand of Jehovah hath wrought this" (Job 12:9). This argument should have silenced Job's comforters; but it didn't. There is no blindness as complete as that which exists in the adherents to some false theology. As this is written, a current example of such blindness is being acted out near Waco, Texas, where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) was trying to arrest David Koresh and his Branch-Davidians!

"With aged men is wisdom" (Job 12:12). The paragraph divisions in this chapter are unfortunate. Job 12:13 states that, "With God is wisdom"; and Job here offered that as a correction to the stupid notion that aged men are necessarily wise. Wisdom is not with the `old men' of our world, but with God.