A living joke

¹ Job responded:

² Surely you are the people, and wisdom will die with you.

³ I am also intelligent; I’m not inferior to you. Who isn’t like these people?

⁴ I’m a joke to friends who called to God and he answered; the innocent and blameless one is a joke,

Proverbial wisdom

⁵ a torch of contempt to one who is idle, a fixed point for slipping feet.

⁶ Raiders’ tents are prosperous and God’s provokers secure, who carry God in their hands.

⁷ But ask Behemoth, and he will teach you, the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;

⁸ or talk to earth, and it will teach you; the fish of the sea will recount it for you.

⁹ Among all these, who hasn’t known that the LORD’s hand did this?

¹⁰ In whose grasp is the life of every thing, the breath of every person?

¹¹ Doesn’t the ear test words and the palate taste food?

God’s majesty

¹² “In old age is wisdom; understanding in a long life.”

¹³ With him are wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his.

¹⁴ If he tears down, it can’t be rebuilt; if he ties a person up, he can’t be set free.

¹⁵ If he restricts water, they have drought; if he lets it loose, it overturns the land.

¹⁶ With him are might and success; the deceiver and the deceived are his.

¹⁷ He leads advisors away barefoot; makes madmen of judges;

¹⁸ unties the belt of kings, binds a garment around their loins;

¹⁹ leads priests away barefoot; overthrows the well-established;

²⁰ silences the talk of trusted people; takes away elders’ discernment;

²¹ pours contempt on royalty; loosens the belt of the strong;

²² discloses deep secrets of darkness, makes utter darkness enter the light;

²³ makes nations prominent and destroys them, expands nations and leads them astray;

²⁴ takes away the power to think from earth’s leaders, making them wander in untraveled wastelands.

²⁵ They feel their way in the dark without light; he makes them stumble like drunks.