Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 12:25
They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like [a] drunken [man].
25. Further description of their perplexity. Cf. ch. Job 5:14.
maketh them to stagger ] Or, to wander. Cf. Isa 19:14; Psa 107:27; Psa 107:40.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
They grope in the dark – They are like persons who attempt to feel their way along in the dark; compare the notes at Isa 59:10.
And he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man – Margin, wander. Their unstable and perplexed counsels are like the reelings of a drunken man; see Isa 19:14, note; Isa 24:20, note. This closes the chapter, and with it the controversy in regard to the ability to adduce pertinent and striking proverbial expressions; see the notes at Job 12:3. Job had showed them that he was as familiar with proverbs respecting God as they were, and that he entertained as exalted ideas of the control and government of the Most High as they did. It may be added, that these are sublime and beautiful expressions respecting God. They surpass all that can be found in the writings of the pagan; and they show that somehow in the earliest ages there prevailed views of God which the human mind for ages afterward, and in the most favorable circumstances, was not capable of originating. These proverbial sayings were doubtless fragments of revealed truth, which had come down by tradition, and which were thus embodied in a form convenient to be transmitted from age to age.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 25. They grope in the dark] The writer seems to have had his eye on those words of Moses, De 28:28-29: The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart; and thou shalt GROPE AT NOONDAY, as the BLIND GROPETH IN DARKNESS. And this also may refer to the unaccountable errors, transgressions, and judicial blindness of the Israelites in their journeying to the promised land: but it will apply also to the state of wicked nations under judicial blindness. The writer is principally indebted for his imagery, and indeed for the chief expressions used here, to Ps 107:27: They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man. Ps 107:39-40: Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow. He POURETH CONTEMPT UPON PRINCES, and CAUSETH THEM TO WONDER IN THE WILDERNESS, where there is NO WAY.
Mr. Good has some judicious reflections on this chapter, particularly on Job 12:13-22: “It should be observed,” says he, “that the entire passage has a reference to the machinery of a regular and political government; and that its general drift is to imprint on the mind of the hearer the important doctrine that the whole of the constituent principles of such a government, its officers and institutions; its monarchs and princes; its privy-counsellors, judges, and ministers of state; its chieftains, public orators, and assembly of elders; its nobles, or men of hereditary rank; and its stout robust peasantry, as we should express it in the present day; nay, the deep designing villains that plot in secret its destruction; – that the nations themselves, and the heads or sovereigns of the nations, are all and equally in the hands of the Almighty: that with him human pomp is poverty; human excellence, turpitude; human judgment, error; human wisdom, folly; human dignity, contempt; human strength, weakness.”
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
They grope, like men that cannot see their way.
In the dark without light; two phrases expressing the same thing, emphatically to express their profound darkness.
Like a drunken man, who reels hither and thither without any certainty. So they sometimes take one course, and sometimes another, as resolving to try all experiments, and indeed not knowing what to do.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
25. Deu 28:29;Psa 107:27 again quote Job, butin a different connection.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
They grope in the dark without light,…. Like blind men, as the men of Sodom, when they were struck with blindness; or “they grope”, or “feel the dark, and not light” g, as the Targum; as the Egyptian, did when such gross darkness was upon them as might be felt:
and he maketh them to stagger like [a] drunken [man]; that has lost his sight, his senses, and his feet, and knows not where he is, which way to go, nor how to keep on his legs, but reels to and fro, and is at the utmost loss what to do; all this is said of the heads or chief of the people, in consequence of their hearts being taken away, and so left destitute of wisdom and strength.
g “palpant tenebras et non lucem”, Vatablus, Mercerus, Drusius, Schultens.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
25. They grope, etc. They feel the darkness and not light. Gesenius. The reading of the Septuagint is nearly the same. Their blindness must be intense, when the sense of feeling is their sight.
He maketh God is said to do what he permits to be done. Men who resist grace he leaves a prey to the laws of nature laws outside of the kingdom of grace. Their work God is said to perform, because it is through laws of his enactment. If he withdraw the enlightening and restraining influences of his grace, the twofold result darkness and confusion must follow. Thus deserted, nations like Egypt, (Isa 19:14,) and individuals like Saul, alike stagger to their doom. The withdrawal of himself is the great positive evil God inflicts upon an impure soul in the eternal world.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
REFLECTIONS
READER! you and I shall go over this sweet and interesting book of Job to very little good, if we do not, as we read it, look up for the teaching of the HOLY GHOST, and seek from it to search our own interest in what we meet with in the several chapters. Our own life is the most important of all lives to be well versed in: and depend upon it, what we meet with in the history of Job and his friends, may, in numberless occasions, under the SPIRIT’S teaching, be made profitable to our own. It was a blessed command the man of GOD had in commission to give the church, when he said, ‘thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy GOD led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no’. Under this idea, is there nothing in what we have already reviewed of Job’s history, applicable to ourselves? is not Satan accusing us as he did Job? Hath our gracious GOD permitted him to harass us with his devices? Have we the unkindness of friends, or the malice of open enemies, to grapple with also? Hath the LORD brought us under any bereaving providences; any bodily or spiritual afflictions? How are we exercised on any of these occasions! Pause, Reader! look into your own heart, as I pray GOD to search mine. How are we dealing with GOD; and how is the LORD dealing with us? Oh! Sir, depend upon it, that is ever a sweet mercy, however harsh it may at first seem, which, in the close, brings the soul to JESUS. The medicine we take may be nauseous, but its effect is salutary. Job was stripped of all his earthly comforts: but Job lost not his GOD. This brought him up. Let our bodies be ever so poor, ever so sickly, ever so sore, yet, if we have JESUS formed in our souls, the hope of glory, here is enough to sing Hallelujah in the whole. And if the trials the LORD sends come with a commission to lead to JESUS, surely love was at the bottom, and by and by our praises will be called forth in acknowledgment. LORD, I would say for myself and Reader, give us both grace to be ever on the lookout, for the LORD’S manifestations to us, and our proper and wise use of them; and then we shall assuredly find that at evening time it will be light. Mercy and goodness have been following us all the days of our life, until we come to dwell in the house of our GOD forever.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
“Handfuls of Purpose”
For All Gleaners
“He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.” Job 12:25
Here are men who are drunk, but not with wine; men who suppose themselves to be highly gifted, and yet who do not know their way home again when they have once gone astray. God controls all physical substance and faculty: he toucheth the strength of a man, and it fades away: he waves his hand, so to say, across his brain, and all power of thinking is for ever suspended: he turneth a man’s purposes upside down. The deplorable and lamentable thing, viewed from a human standing-point, is that the men appear to be as strong and prosperous as ever, when their right hand has forgotten its cunning and their tongue can no longer speak familiar words: they represent death in life; they are as walking sepulchres: all the framework is there in its entirety, but the spirit within is humiliated, dispossessed, or quenched. What, then, is our security? What is the guarantee that to the end we may possess sanity of mind, strength and dignity of judgment? We are only safe in proportion as we keep company with God; as we invoke the abiding presence and ministry of the Holy Ghost; as we remember that we are nothing and have nothing, and that every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights. We sometimes ascribe great failures of mind and body to small causes. We should remember that there is a great Sovereign above all, who appoints and disappoints, who leads forward and smites backward, who makes the first last, and the last first, not according to some arbitrary will, but according to a law of grace and love, the full scope of which we have not yet comprehended. Better to be abased in this world, than to be destroyed in the next. Better to understand here and now that we are only servants than to be taught hereafter that there is no hope for us. This is the time of school, of drill, of discipline, of all the educational processes which may end in mature wisdom and strength. Here, again, we come upon the salutary exhortation, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom.” We are limited on every side. Our wisdom is but partial. Our greatest intellectual successes are but beginnings. We shall begin to go down in all the best qualities of our soul, when we suppose we have approached the point of finality, because then we may turn round and make demands upon society, which are unsupported by reason and justice. Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe: put thine hand round about me, then I shall no longer stagger like a drunken man. What is my hope? What is my confidence? Yea, what is my expectation? Truly I will think nothing of myself, and attempt to be nothing in my own power and right: I will live as God’s servant, I will pray as God’s little child, I will have no way of my own from morning to night; in life, in death, my cry shall be: Not my will, but thine, be done.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Job 12:25 They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like [a] drunken [man].
Ver. 25. They grope in the dark without light ] This is the second simile, setting forth this judiciary act of God in taking away the heart of the heads of the earth; grope they do, and would fain find out a way by feeling, but they feel darkness, and not light (so the Hebrew); they try to help themselves and their people out of misery, as the last Greek emperor did notably; but it would not be (Turk. Hist. 345).
And he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
grope: Job 5:14, Gen 19:11, Deu 28:29, Isa 59:10, Act 13:11, 1Jo 2:11
maketh: Psa 107:27, Isa 19:14, Isa 24:20
stagger: Heb. wander
Reciprocal: Pro 4:19 – General