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<p>This is a noble discourse of Job’s concerning the wisdom, power, and sovereignty of God, in ordering and disposing of all the affairs of the children of men, according to the counsel of his own will, which none dares gainsay or can resist. Take both him and them out of the controversy in which they were so warmly engaged, and they all spoke admirably well; but, in <i>that</i>, we sometimes scarcely know what to make of them. It were well if wise and good men, that differ in their apprehensions about minor things, would see it to be for their honour and comfort, and the edification of others, to dwell most upon those great things in which they are agreed. On this subject Job speaks like himself. Here are no passionate complaints, no peevish reflections, but every thing masculine and great.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">I. He asserts the unsearchable wisdom and irresistible power of God. It is allowed that among men there is <i>wisdom and understanding</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Job.12.12" href="/passage/?search=Job.12.12">Job 12:12</a>. But it is to be found only with some few, <i>with the ancient</i>, and those who are blessed with length of days, who get it by long experience and constant experience; and, when they have got the wisdom, they have lost their strength and are unable to execute the results of their wisdom. But now <i>with God there are</i> both <i>wisdom and strength</i>, wisdom to design the best and strength to accomplish what is designed. He does not get counsel or understanding, as we do, by observation, but he has it essentially and eternally in himself, <a class="bibleref" title="Job.12.13" href="/passage/?search=Job.12.13">Job 12:13</a>. What is the wisdom of ancient men compared with the wisdom of the ancient of days! It is but little that we know, and less that we can do; but God can do every thing, and <i>no thought can be withheld from him</i>. Happy are those who have this God for their God, for they have infinite wisdom and strength engaged for them. Foolish and fruitless are all the attempts of men against him (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.12.14" href="/passage/?search=Job.12.14">Job 12:14</a>): <i>He breaketh down, and it cannot be built again</i>. Note, There is no contending with the divine providence, nor breaking the measures of it. As he had said before (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.9.12" href="/passage/?search=Job.9.12">Job 9:12</a>), <i>He takes away, and who can hinder him</i>? so he says again. What God says cannot be gainsaid, nor what he does undone. There is no rebuilding what God will have to lie in ruins; witness the tower of Babel, which the undertakers could not go on with, and the desolations of Sodom and Gomorrah, which could never be repaired. See <a class="bibleref" title="Isa.25.2,Ezek.26.14,Rev.18.21" href="/passage/?search=Isa.25.2,Ezek.26.14,Rev.18.21"><span class="bibleref" title="Isa.25.2">Isa. 25:2</span>; <span class="bibleref" title="Ezek.26.14">Ezek. 26:14</span>; <span class="bibleref" title="Rev.18.21">Rev. 18:21</span></a>. There is no releasing those whom God has condemned to a perpetual imprisonment; if <i>he shut up</i> a man by sickness, reduce him to straits, and embarrass him in his affairs, <i>there can be no opening</i>. He shuts up in the grave, and none can break open those sealed doors—shuts up in hell, in chains of darkness, and none can pass that great gulf fixed.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">II. He gives an instance, for the proof of this doctrine in nature, <a class="bibleref" title="Job.12.15" href="/passage/?search=Job.12.15">Job 12:15</a>. God has the command of <i>the waters, binds them as in a garment</i> (<a class="bibleref" title="Prov.30.4" href="/passage/?search=Prov.30.4">Prov. 30:4</a>), holds them <i>in the hollow of his hand</i> (<a class="bibleref" title="Isa.40.12" href="/passage/?search=Isa.40.12">Isa. 40:12</a>); and he can punish the children of men either by the defect or by the excess of them. As men break the laws of virtue by extremes on each hand, both defects and excesses, while virtue is in the mean, so God corrects them by extremes, and denies them the mercy which is in the mean. 1. Great droughts are sometimes great judgments: <i>He withholds the waters, and they dry up</i>; if the heaven be as brass, the earth is as iron; if the rain be denied, fountains dry up and their streams are wanted, fields are parched and their fruits are wanted, <a class="bibleref" title="Amos.4.7" href="/passage/?search=Amos.4.7">Amos 4:7</a>. 2. Great wet is sometimes a great judgment. He raises the waters, and <i>overturns the earth</i>, the productions of it, the buildings upon it. A sweeping rain is said to <i>leave no food</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Prov.28.3" href="/passage/?search=Prov.28.3">Prov. 28:3</a>. See how many ways God has of contending with a sinful people and taking from them abused, forfeited, mercies; and how utterly unable we are to contend with him. If we might invert the order, <a class="bibleref" title="Job.12.15" href="/passage/?search=Job.12.15">Job 12:15</a> would fitly refer to Noah’s flood, that ever memorable instance of the divine power. God then, in wrath, sent the waters out, and they overturned the earth; but in mercy he withheld them, shut the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep, and then, in a little time, they dried up.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">III. He gives many instances of it in God’s powerful management of the children of men, crossing their purposes and serving his own by them and upon them, overruling all their counsels, overpowering all their attempts, and overcoming all their oppositions. What changes does God make with men! what turns does he give them! how easily, how surprisingly!</p>
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<p class="tab-1">1. In general (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.12.16" href="/passage/?search=Job.12.16">Job 12:16</a>): <i>With him are strength and reason</i> (so some translate it), strength and consistency with himself: it is an elegant word in the original. With him are the very quintessence and extract of wisdom. <i>With him are power and all that is</i>; so some read it. He is what he is of himself, and by him and in him all things subsist. Having this strength and wisdom, he knows how to make use, not only of those who are wise and good, who willingly and designedly serve him, but even of those who are foolish and bad, who, one would think, could be made no way serviceable to the designs of his providence: <i>The deceived and the deceiver are his</i>; the simplest men that are deceived are not below his notice; the subtlest men that deceive cannot with all their subtlety escape his cognizance. The world is full of deceit; the one half of mankind cheats the other, and God suffers it to be so, and from both will at last bring glory to himself. The deceivers make tools of the deceived, but the great God makes tools of them both, wherewith he works, and none can hinder him. He has wisdom and might enough to manage all the fools and knaves in the world, and knows how to serve his own purposes by them, notwithstanding the weakness of the one and the wickedness of the other. When Jacob by a fraud got the blessing the design of God’s grace was served; when Ahab was drawn by a false prophecy into an expedition that was his ruin the design of God’s justice was served; and in both <i>the deceived and the deceiver</i> were at his disposal. See <a class="bibleref" title="Ezek.14.9" href="/passage/?search=Ezek.14.9">Ezek. 14:9</a>. God would not suffer the sin of the deceiver, nor the misery of the deceived, if he knew not how to set bounds to both and bring glory to himself out of both. <i>Hallelujah, the Lord God omnipotent</i> thus reigns; and it is well he does, for otherwise there is so little wisdom and so little honesty in the world that it would all have been in confusion and ruin long ago.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">2. He next descends to the particular instances of the wisdom and power of God in the revolutions of states and kingdom 2bef s; for thence he fetches his proofs, rather than from the like operations of Providence concerning private persons and families, because the more high and public the station is in which men are placed the more the changes that befal them are taken notice of, and consequently the more illustriously does Providence shine forth in them. And it is easy to argue, If God can thus turn and toss the great ones of the earth, like a ball in a large place (as the prophet speaks, <a class="bibleref" title="Isa.22.18" href="/passage/?search=Isa.22.18">Isa. 22:18</a>), much more the little ones; and with him to whom states and kingdoms must submit it is surely the greatest madness for us to contend. Some think that Job here refers to the extirpation of those powerful nations, the Rephaim, the Zuzim, the Emim, and the Horites (mentioned <a class="bibleref" title="Gen.14.5,Gen.14.6,Deut.2.10,Deut.2.20" href="/passage/?search=Gen.14.5,Gen.14.6,Deut.2.10,Deut.2.20"><span class="bibleref" title="Gen.14.5">Gen. 14:5</span>, <span class="bibleref" title="Gen.14.6">6</span>; <span class="bibleref" title="Deut.2.10">Deut. 2:10</span>, <span class="bibleref" title="Deut.2.20">20</span></a>), in which perhaps it was particularly noticed how strangely they were infatuated and enfeebled: if so, it is designed to show that whenever the like is done in the affairs of nations it is God that does it, and we must therein observe his sovereign dominion, even over those that think themselves most powerful, politic, and absolute. Compare this with that of Eliphaz, <a class="bibleref" title="Job.5.12-Job.5.14" href="/passage/?search=Job.5.12-Job.5.14">Job 5:12-14</a> Let us gather up the particular changes here specified, which God makes upon persons, either for the destruction of nations and the planting of others in their room or for the turning out of a particular government and ministry and the elevation of another in its room, which may be a blessing to the kingdom; witness the glorious Revolution in our own land twenty years ago, in which we saw as happy an exposition as ever was given of this discourse of Job’s. (1.) Those that were wise are sometimes strangely infatuated, and in this the hand of God must be acknowledged (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.12.17" href="/passage/?search=Job.12.17">Job 12:17</a>): <i>He leadeth counsellors away spoiled</i>, as trophies of his victory over them, spoiled of all the honour and wealth they have got by their policy, nay, spoiled of the wisdom itself for which they have been celebrated and the success they promised themselves in their projects. His counsel stands, while all their devices are brought to nought and their designs baffled, and so they are spoiled both of the satisfaction and of the reputation of their wisdom. <i>He maketh the judges fools</i>. By a work on their minds he deprives them of their qualifications for business, and so they become really fools; and by his disposal of their affairs he makes the issue and event of their projects to be quite contrary to what they themselves intended, and so he makes them look like fools. The counsel of Ahithophel, one in whom this scripture was remarkably fulfilled, became foolishness, and he, according to his name, <i>the brother of a fool</i>. See <a class="bibleref" title="Isa.19.13" href="/passage/?search=Isa.19.13">Isa. 19:13</a>; <i>The princes of Zoan have become fools; they have seduced Egypt, even those that are the stay of the tribes thereof</i>. Let not the wise man therefore glory in his wisdom, nor the ablest counsellors and judges be proud of their station, but humbly depend upon God for the continuance of their abilities. Even the aged, who seem to hold their wisdom by prescription, and think they have got it by their own industry and therefore have an indefeasible title to it, may yet be deprived of it, and often are, by the infirmities of age, which make them twice children: He <i>taketh away the un
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<p class="tab-1">Thus are the revolutions of kingdoms wonderfully brought about by an overruling Providence. Heaven and earth are shaken, but the Lord sits King for ever, and with him we look for <i>a kingdom that cannot be shaken</i>.</p>
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