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Job 12
1Then Job answered,
2“No doubt, but you are the people, and wisdom will die with you.
3But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Yes, who doesn’t know such things as these?
4I am like one who is a joke to his neighbor, I, who called on God, and he answered. The just, the blameless man is a joke.
5In the thought of him who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune. It is ready for them whose foot slips.
6The tents of robbers prosper. Those who provoke God are secure, who carry their god in their hands.
7“But ask the animals now, and they will teach you; the birds of the sky, and they will tell you.
8Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you. The fish of the sea will declare to you.
9Who doesn’t know that in all these, the LORD’s hand has done this,
10in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?
11Doesn’t the ear try words, even as the palate tastes its food?
12With aged men is wisdom, in length of days understanding.
13“With God is wisdom and might. He has counsel and understanding.
14Behold, he breaks down, and it can’t be built again. He imprisons a man, and there can be no release.
15Behold, he withholds the waters, and they dry up. Again, he sends them out, and they overturn the earth.
16With him is strength and wisdom. The and the deceiver are his.
17He leads counselors away stripped. He makes judges fools.
18He loosens the bond of . He binds their waist with a belt.
19He leads away stripped, and overthrows the mighty.
20He removes the speech of those who are trusted, and takes away the understanding of the elders.
21He pours contempt on princes, and loosens the belt of the strong.
22He uncovers deep things out of darkness, and brings out to light the shadow of death.
23He increases the nations, and he destroys them. He enlarges the nations, and he leads them captive.
24He takes away understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth, and causes them to wander in a where there is no way.
25They grope in the dark without light. He makes them stagger like a drunken man.
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Questions this passage answers
Why does God allow suffering?
Scripture never gives one tidy reason for all suffering. It says that pain entered a good world through sin, that God is neither its author nor its prisoner, that he uses it without approving of it, and that he entered it himself in Christ rather than explaining it from a distance. The Bible answers the question with a person before it answers it with an argument.
Why does God seem silent?
God's apparent silence is felt by some of the most faithful people in Scripture, not only by the weak in faith. David, Job and Habakkuk all cried out into what felt like empty air. Scripture never rebukes them for asking. It records their words as prayer, answers them in its own time, and teaches that God's silence is never his absence.