Job 28:22

22. We have heard the fame thereof The silence of the living suggests appeal to the dead. New regions of being may perchance have opened new resources of knowledge. In sublime figure the poet summons destruction (Hebrew, Abaddon, see Job 26:6) and death. All the information they can give is hearsay. They have heard a vague report. In the gloomy view of the ancients, death gave but little increase of knowledge. If the living know not, much less the dead.

Third strophe With God is the lofty abode of wisdom, as is attested by its display in the creation and ordering of the world. True wisdom he imparts to man through obedience to the divine law and through the fear of God two divinely appointed conservators against wickedness and the consequent doom of those who practice evil, Job 28:23-28. “The last of these three divisions (of the chapter), into which the highest truths are compressed, is for emphasis the shortest, in its calmness and abrupt ending the most solemn, because the thought finds no expression that is altogether adequate, floating in a height that is immeasurable, but opening a boundless field for further reflection.” Ewald.