Job 28 · Read 10 min · think and write 15 min
In the last lesson, the three friends came to comfort Job, and as they talked, comfort turned into accusation. Job said to them, “You are all miserable comforters!” (Job 16:2). Round after round of debate went by, and no one convinced anyone.
This lesson’s passage sits in the middle of Job’s words: before it, “Job again took up his parable, and said” (Job 27:1); after it, the same words again (Job 29:1). But the tone of this chapter is different. It does not argue. It asks one question: where is wisdom?
1“Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold which they refine.
2Iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted out of the ore.
3Man sets an end to darkness, and searches out, to the furthest bound, the stones of obscurity and of thick darkness.
4He breaks open a shaft away from where people live. They are forgotten by the foot. They hang far from men, they swing back and forth.
The earth brings out bread, yet underneath it are sapphires and dust of gold; no bird of prey, no falcon’s eye, no lion has gone along the paths of those mines. (vv. 5–8)
9He puts his hand on the flinty rock, and he overturns the mountains by the roots.
10He cuts out channels among the rocks. His eye sees every precious thing.
11He binds the streams that they don’t trickle. The thing that is hidden he brings out to light.
12“But where will wisdom be found? Where is the place of understanding?
13Man doesn’t know its price, and it isn’t found in the land of the living.
14The deep says, ‘It isn’t in me.’ The sea says, ‘It isn’t with me.’
15It can’t be gotten for gold, neither will silver be weighed for its price.
The gold of Ophir, onyx, sapphire, coral, crystal, rubies, the topaz of Ethiopia — none of them can equal wisdom. (vv. 16–19)
20Where then does wisdom come from? Where is the place of understanding?
21Seeing it is hidden from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the birds of the sky.
22Destruction and Death say, ‘We have heard a rumor of it with our ears.’
23“God understands its way, and he knows its place.
24For he looks to the ends of the earth, and sees under the whole sky.
25He establishes the force of the wind. Yes, he measures out the waters by measure.
26When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder,
27then he saw it, and declared it. He established it, yes, and searched it out.
28To man he said, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. To depart from evil is understanding.’”
Read the whole chapter: Job 28, 28 verses.
People are good at finding things. The chapter opens with what people can do: “Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold which they refine” (v. 1). People break open a shaft “away from where people live,” and even “hang far from men, they swing back and forth” (v. 4); a man “puts his hand on the flinty rock, and he overturns the mountains by the roots” (v. 9), and “The thing that is hidden he brings out to light” (v. 11). However deep a thing is buried, people can find it.
But. Verse 12 turns with its first word: “But where will wisdom be found? Where is the place of understanding?” (v. 12). The one who can dig out gold cannot dig out wisdom. “Man doesn’t know its price, and it isn’t found in the land of the living” (v. 13).
It cannot be bought. “It can’t be gotten for gold” (v. 15). Then the passage lists one treasure after another — the gold of Ophir, onyx, sapphire, coral, crystal — and says, “It can’t be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire” (v. 16). The most precious things people have are not enough, set beside wisdom.
Asked twice. Verse 20 asks again: “Where then does wisdom come from? Where is the place of understanding?” (v. 20). This time even “Destruction and Death say, ‘We have heard a rumor of it with our ears’” (v. 22). The living cannot find it, the deep cannot find it, and even death has only heard a rumor of it.
God knows. “God understands its way, and he knows its place” (v. 23). The chapter does not say that people finally found wisdom; it only says that God knows where it is. He “establishes the force of the wind” and “measures out the waters by measure” (v. 25); he “made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder” (v. 26). The one who rules wind, rain, and thunder also knows where wisdom is.
To man he said. The chapter’s last line is what God says to man: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. To depart from evil is understanding” (v. 28). We heard these words in Lesson 1, when the book introduced Job as “one who feared God, and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). The words that described Job at the very start of the book have here become wisdom itself.
This is not an answer. What Job wants to know is: why am I suffering? This chapter does not answer that question. Verse 28 speaks of fear, not of explanation. A person can not understand and still fear God; this is not having everything figured out, but knowing, when you do not understand, that God does.
What Job and his three friends were arguing about was whose account was right: whether suffering comes because of sin. All of them were using their own cleverness to find explanations for what God does.
This chapter puts everyone in the same place: wisdom “isn’t found in the land of the living” (v. 13). Job does not know, and neither do his friends. Only God knows.
We are good at finding answers: looking things up, asking people, comparing, analyzing. But there are some things that, however deep you dig, you cannot dig out an answer for.
This lesson is not asking you to stop thinking. It invites you to see that there is a wisdom that is not dug out, but found in the fear of God. Even if you do not understand yet, you can fear him first.
This week: Write down the thing you have long wanted to understand. Below it, copy out verse 28: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. To depart from evil is understanding.” Read it once each day this week, without hurrying to find an answer.
Scripture: World English Bible.