A living joke

¹Job responded:

²Surely you are the people,

and wisdom will die with you.

³I am also intelligent;

I’m not inferior to you.

Who isn’t like these people?

⁴I’m a joke to friends

the innocent and blameless one is a joke,

⁵a torch of contempt to one who is idle,[#12.5 Heb uncertain]

a fixed point for slipping feet.

Proverbial wisdom

⁶Raiders’ tents are prosperous

and God’s provokers secure,

who carry God in their hands.

⁷But ask Behemoth, and he will teach you,

the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;

⁸or talk to earth, and it will teach you;

the fish of the sea will recount it for you.

⁹Among all these, who hasn’t known

that the LORD ’s hand did this?

¹⁰In whose grasp is the life of every thing,

the breath of every person?

¹¹Doesn’t the ear test words

and the palate taste food?

¹²“In old age is wisdom;

understanding in a long life.”

God’s majesty

¹³With him are wisdom and power;

counsel and understanding are his.

¹⁴If he tears down, it can’t be rebuilt;

if he ties a person up, he can’t be set free.

¹⁵If he restricts water, they have drought;

if he lets it loose, it overturns the land.

¹⁶With him are might and success;

the deceiver and the deceived are his.

¹⁷He leads advisors away barefoot;

¹⁸unties the belt of kings,

¹⁹leads priests away barefoot;

overthrows the well-established;

²⁰silences the talk of trusted people;

takes away elders’ discernment;

²¹pours contempt on royalty;

loosens the belt of the strong;

²²discloses deep secrets of darkness,

makes utter darkness enter the light;

²³makes nations prominent and destroys them,

expands nations and leads them astray;

²⁴takes away the power to think from earth’s leaders,

making them wander in untraveled wastelands.

²⁵They feel their way in the dark without light;