Job - Chapter 12

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¹ Job spoke next. He said:

² Doubtless, you are the voice of the people, and when you die, wisdom will die with you!

³ But I have a brain, as well as you, I am in no way inferior to you, and who, in any case, does not know all that?

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⁴ Anyone becomes a laughing-stock to his friends if he cries to God and expects an answer. People laugh at anyone who has integrity and is upright.

⁵ 'Add insult to injury,' think the prosperous, 'strike the fellow now that he is staggering!'

⁶ And yet the tents of brigands are left in peace: those who provoke God dwell secure and so does anyone who makes a god of his fist!

⁷ You have only to ask the cattle, for them to instruct you, and the birds of the sky, for them to inform you.

⁸ The creeping things of earth will give you lessons, and the fish of the sea provide you an explanation:

⁹ there is not one such creature but will know that the hand of God has arranged things like this!

¹⁰ In his hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of every human being!

¹¹ Can the ear not distinguish the value of what is said, just as the palate can tell one food from another?

¹² Wisdom is found in the old, and discretion comes with great age.

¹³ But in him there is wisdom, and power too, and good counsel no less than discretion.

¹⁴ What he destroys, no one can rebuild; whom he imprisons, no one can release.

¹⁵ Is there a drought? He has withheld the waters. Do they play havoc on earth? He has let them loose.

¹⁶ In him is strength, in him resourcefulness, beguiler and beguiled alike are his.

¹⁷ He robs a country's counsellors of their wits, turns judges into fools.

¹⁸ He undoes the belts of kings and knots a rope round their waists.

¹⁹ He makes priests walk barefoot, and overthrows the powers that are established.

²⁰ He strikes the most assured of speakers dumb and robs old people of their discretion.

²¹ He pours contempt on the nobly born, and unbuckles the belt of the strong.

²² He unveils the depths of darkness, brings shadow dark as death to the light.

²³ He builds nations up, then ruins them, he makes peoples expand, then suppresses them.

²⁴ He strips a country's leaders of their judgement, and leaves them to wander in a trackless waste,

²⁵ to grope about in unlit darkness, lurching to and fro as though drunk.