Job 12 - Amplified Bible(AMP)

Job Chides His Accusers

1Then Job responded,

2“No doubt you are the people,

And wisdom will die with you!

3“But I have intelligence and understanding as well as you;

I am not inferior to you.

Who does not know such things as these?

4“I am a joke to my friends;

I, one whom God answered when he called upon Him—

A just and blameless man is a joke.

5“He who is at ease has contempt for misfortune,

But misfortune is ready for those whose feet slip.

6“The tents of the destroyers prosper;

And those who provoke God are secure,

Whom God brings into their power.

7¶“Now ask the animals, and let them teach you;

And ask the birds of the air, and let them tell you;

8Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you;

And let the fish of the sea declare to you.

9“Who among all these does not recognize

That the hand of the Lord has done this,

10In whose hand is the life of every living thing,

And the breath of all mankind?

11“Does the ear not put words to the test,

Just as the palate tastes its food?

12“With the aged is wisdom,

And with long life is understanding.

Job Speaks of the Power of God

13¶“But with Him are wisdom and might;

He has counsel and understanding.

14“Behold, He tears down, and it cannot be rebuilt;

He imprisons a man, and there can be no release.

15“Behold, He restrains the waters, and they dry up;

Again, He sends the waters out, and they overwhelm and devastate the earth.

16“With Him are might and sound wisdom,

The misled and the misleader are His.

17“He makes counselors walk barefoot

And makes fools of judges.

18“He loosens the bond of kings

And binds their loins with a loincloth.

19“He makes priests walk barefoot,

And He overturns men firmly seated and secure.

20“He deprives the trusted ones of speech

And takes away the discernment and discretion of the aged.

21“He pours contempt on princes and nobles

And loosens the belt of the strong.

22“He uncovers mysteries out of the darkness

And brings black gloom and the shadow of death into light.

23“He makes nations great, and He destroys them;

He enlarges nations, and leads them away.

24“He removes intelligence and understanding from the leaders of the people of the earth

And makes them wander and move blindly in a pathless waste.

25“They grope in darkness without light,

And He makes them stagger like a drunken man.”