Job begins to show his friends that he is well acquainted with the proverbial wisdom, power, and the unfathomable greatness of God. Indeed, with age comes wisdom and experience offers understanding (Job 12:12). However, with God wisdom and power never increase. He is as wise and as powerful today, as he had been in the past. Neither shall he increase in wisdom or power in the future. The Lord, our Creator, already possess all that could ever be known, and he already possess all the power or authority that could ever be had. Thus, he not only possesses the wisdom needed to do what is necessary, but he also possesses the power and authority to accomplish his will in carrying out what he finds necessary to do (Job 12:13).
God is sovereign, and his power is absolute. He is able to destroy a thing to the extent that man is unable to build it up again. He shuts up man in a prison of circumstances, out of which man is unable to extract himself, frustrating every plan that men could devise that would alter the will of God. There is absolutely no one who could ever successfully oppose God (Job 12:14; cp. Revelation 3:7). Many have presumed Job referred to world that were destroyed by God in the Flood, and, while this can be applied to Job’s point, I believe Job actually referred to the Lord’s work, vis-à-vis what he created. He cursed the land (Genesis 3:17-19), and no one is able to turn back the curse. No matter what man does or what machines he is able to invent and produce, the earth will yield its treasures only through the sweat of man’s labor, and even this is limited by weather and the calamities of nature. Moreover, the Lord is able to alter the original design of his creation, as he did in the Flood, and mankind is completely helpless to recover what has been lost to him by the judgment of God (Job 12:14-15).
Job repeats what he said in verse-13 and adds that man’s behavior, whether good or evil is under God’s power (Job 12:16). Whatever is done is permitted by God and is under his complete control. Job’s friends are under the impression that the Lord always judges morality, punishing the deceiver and protecting the deceived, but this simply isn’t so. The Lord established a hands-off policy in Genesis 2:16. He promised to judge only rebellion (Genesis 2:17), which he did (Genesis 3 & 6). Mankind, without Christ, is in the state of rebellion and have been cast out from the presence of God (Genesis 3:22-24). While those in Christ are able to return to God’s presence (Hebrews 10:19-22; cp. Revelation 11:1), those not in Christ remain distant and unable to detect his existence (Job 9:11; cp. Revelation 11:2). The problem is that mankind, as a whole, has no idea who they are dealing with, as that pertains to the nature of God.
Therefore, even though mankind had been cast out of God’s presence, his original plan for man, vis-à-vis the means through which man was to come to know God, understand the way in which he should go and become like God in the process (cp. Genesis 1:27), was to eat of any tree, except that of rebellion (Genesis 2:16-17). His palate was to give him understanding of what was good and evil (Job 12:11). Therefore, the Lord, as a rule, doesn’t judge man’s moral behavior, as Job’s friends believed. Rather, he limits evil by bringing those who trust in wicked ways to the ultimate end of the evil choice they’ve made. Job dresses the following proverbs of the Lord’s greatness in what he previously claimed, namely, that the Lord tears down what has been built up, and he shuts up a man in difficult circumstances and no man is able to reverse what God does (Job 12:14). He frustrates the plans of men (Job 12:17; Romans 1:21-22); he removes the power of kings and gives what they have to another (Job 12:18); he even spoils the power of the priests who hold sway over the minds of men (Job 12:19), and removes the trust in those whose counsel had proved faithful in the past (Job 12:20; cp. 2Samuel 15:31; 16:20, 23; 17:1-14).[1] He even causes the people to disrespect their heroes and weakens the power of the mighty (Job 12:21).
There is nothing hidden which God doesn’t already know and could make known (Matthew 10:26), no matter how secret or what measures have been taken to keep it from becoming common knowledge (Job 12:22).[2] The Lord has the power to strengthen nations and weaken them again, to enlarge their borders or their reputations among the other nations and then weakens and discredits them, so that they return to their former state once again (Job 12:23). It is all done through wrong intelligence and advice to continue in the failed efforts of the past. Thus, the leaders of the world and their staff of advisors wander in a desert-like policy, unable to find a course that would lead them out of their problems and into the desired end (Job 12:24-25).
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[1] Consider the American Cold War policy of Containment, which was an utter failure, though supported by several American Presidents and their advisors.
[2] Consider the Pentagon Papers, which were discovered and made known to the public by our American news agencies in 1971, and discovery the Watergate Conspiracy that led to the resignation of an American President in 1974.
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