Job 27:12

Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(12) Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it.—That is, “You have seen me so proclaim the great power of God.”

Benson Commentary

Job 27:12. Ye yourselves have seen it — I speak no false or strange things: but what is known and confirmed by your own experience, and that of others. Why then are ye thus altogether vain? — In maintaining such a foolish and false opinion against your own knowledge and experience?

Why do you so obstinately defend your opinion, and not comply with mine, for the truth of which I appeal to your own consciences?

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

27:11-23 Job's friends, on the same subject, spoke of the misery of wicked men before death as proportioned to their crimes; Job considered that if it were not so, still the consequences of their death would be dreadful. Job undertook to set this matter in a true light. Death to a godly man, is like a fair gale of wind to convey him to the heavenly country; but, to a wicked man, it is like a storm, that hurries him away to destruction. While he lived, he had the benefit of sparing mercy; but now the day of God's patience is over, and he will pour out upon him his wrath. When God casts down a man, there is no flying from, nor bearing up under his anger. Those who will not now flee to the arms of Divine grace, which are stretched out to receive them, will not be able to flee from the arms of Divine wrath, which will shortly be stretched out to destroy them. And what is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and thus lose his own soul?

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it - You have had an opportunity of tracing the proofs of the wisdom of God in his works.

Why then are ye thus altogether vain - Why is it that you maintain such opinions - that you evince no more knowledge of his government and plans - that you argue so inconclusively about him and his administration! Why, since you have had an opportunity of observing the course of events, do you maintain that suffering is necessarily a proof of guilt, and that God deals with all people, in this life, according to their character? A close observation of the course of events would have taught you otherwise. Job proceeds to state what he supposes to be the exact truth on the subject, and particularly aims, in the following chapter, to show that the ways of God are inscrutable, and that we cannot be expected to comprehend them, and are not competent to pronounce upon them.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

12. "Ye yourselves see" that the wicked often are afflicted (though often the reverse, Job 21:33). But do you "vainly" make this an argument to prove from my afflictions that I am wicked?

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I speak no false or strange things, but what is known and confirmed by your own as well as others’ experiences.

Why then are ye thus altogether vain, in maintaining such a foolish and false opinion against your own knowledge and experience? Why do you obstinately defend your opinion, and not comply with mine, for the truth of which I appeal to your own consciences?

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it,.... As they were men of observation, at least made great pretensions to it, as well as of age and experience, they must have seen and observed somewhat at least of the above things; they must have seen the wicked, as David afterwards did, spreading himself like a green bay tree, and the hypocrites in easy and flourishing circumstances, and good men labouring under great afflictions and pressures, and Job himself was now an instance of that before their eyes:

why then are ye thus altogether vain? or "become vain in vanity" (k); so exceeding vain, so excessively trifling, as to speak and act against the dictates of their own conscience, against their own sense, and what they saw with their own eyes, and advance notions so contrary thereunto; as to affirm that evil men are always punished of God in this life, and good men are succeeded and prospered by him; and so from Job's afflictions drew so vain and empty a conclusion, that he must be a wicked man and an hypocrite.

(k) "vanitate vanescitis", Pagninus, Junius & Tremellius, Michaelis, Schultens; "vel evanescitis", Montanus, Bolducius, Beza, Mercerus, Drusius, Piscator, Cocceius.

Geneva Study Bible

Behold, all ye yourselves {h} have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether {i} vain?

{h} That is, these secret judgments of God and yet do not understand them.

(i) Why do you then maintain this error?

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

12. are ye thus altogether vain?] i. e. wherefore do ye cherish and express opinions regarding me so foolish? “Two things are surprising here,” says Dillmann, “first, that Job should undertake to teach the three friends what they had always affirmed; and second, that he should say the opposite of what he had maintained in ch. 21, and 24 of the prosperity of the wicked even to their death.” A third thing might also seem surprising, namely that Job, while now coinciding with his friends in opinion, should reproach them with folly. To appropriate their sentiments and cover the operation by calling them foolish persons was not generous. The connexion, however, of the two clauses in this verse implies that what the three friends had seen of the fate of the wicked (as now to be described by Job , vv13-23) ought to have prevented them from coming to such conclusions regarding Job’s character as they had expressed or insinuated. Obviously to make such a reproach appropriate there must have been a difference clear to the eye between Job’s case and the fate of the wicked. But wherein lay the difference, in Job’s present condition? The three friends might be excused if they did not perceive it. The words do not seem to fit the condition in which Job still remains at the stage of development which the Poem has up to the present reached.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 12. - Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it. The true Divine scheme of action has been so long and so frequently made manifest - openly set forth in the sight o! men - that Job cannot believe that those whom he addresses are ignorant of it. They must themselves have seen the scheme at work. Why then are ye thus altogether vain? Why, then, do they not draw true inferences from the facts that come under their notice? Job 27:12

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

8 For what is the hope of the godless, when He cutteth off,

When Eloah taketh away his soul?

9 Will God hear his cry

When distress cometh upon him?

10 Or can he delight himself in the Almighty,

Can he call upon Eloah at all times?

11 I will teach you concerning the hand of God,

I will not conceal the dealings of the Almighty.

12 Behold, ye have all seen it,

Why then do ye cherish foolish notions?

In comparing himself with the רשׁע, Job is conscious that he has a God who does not leave him unheard, in whom he delights himself, and to whom he can at all times draw near; as, in fact, Job's fellowship with God rests upon the freedom of the most intimate confidence. He is not one of the godless; for what is the hope of one who is estranged from God, when he comes to die? He has no God on whom his hope might establish itself, to whom it could cling. The old expositors err in many ways respecting Job 27:8, by taking בצע, abscindere (root בץ), in the sense of (opes) corradere (thus also more recently Rosenm. after the Targ., Syr., and Jer.), and referring ישׁל to שׁלה in the signification tranquillum esse (thus even Blumenfeld after Ralbag and others). נפשׁו is the object to both verbs, and בצע נפשׁ, abscindere animam, to cut off the thread of life, is to be explained according to Job 6:9; Isaiah 38:12. שׁלח נפשׁ, extrahere animam (from שׁלה, whence שׁליח Arab. salan, the after-birth, cogn. שׁלל . Arab. sll, נשׁל Arab. nsl, nṯl, nšl), is of similar signification, according to another figure, wince the body is conceived of as the sheath (נדנה, Daniel 7:15) of the soul

(Note: On the similar idea of the body, as the kosha (sheath) of the soul, among the Hindus, vid., Psychol. S. 227.)

(comp. Arab. sll in the universal signification evaginare ensem). The fut. apoc. Kal ישׁל ( equals ישׁל) is therefore in meaning equivalent to the intrans. ישּׁל, Deuteronomy 28:40 (according to Ew. 235, c, obtained from this by change of vowel), decidere; and Schnurrer's supposition that ישׁל, like the Arab. ysl, is equivalent to ישׁאל (when God demands it), or such a violent correction as De Lagarde's

(Note: Anm. zur griech. Uebers. der Proverbien (1863), S. VI.f., where the first reason given for this improvement of the text is this, that the usual explanation, according to which ישׁל and יבצע have the same subj. and obj. standing after the verb, is altogether contrary to Semitic usage. But this assertion is groundless, as might be supposed from the very beginning. Thus, e.g., the same obj. is found after two verbs in Job 20:19, and the same subj. and obj. in Nehemiah 3:20.)

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