Job 12:8

World English Bible

Contextual Overview

⁶ The tents of robbers prosper, Those who provoke God are secure; Who carry their God in their hands. ⁷ "But ask the animals, now, and they shall teach you; The birds of the sky, and they shall tell you. ⁸ Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach you; The fish of the sea shall declare to you. ⁹ Who doesn't know that in all these, The hand of Yahweh has done this, ¹⁰ In whose hand is the life of every living thing, The breath of all mankind? ¹¹ Doesn't the ear try words, Even as the palate tastes its food?

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Reciprocal: Genesis 1:25 - General Job 8:10 - Shall not Job 18:3 - Wherefore Proverbs 6:6 - the ant

Cross-References

Genesis 4:26
There was also born a son to Seth, and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on Yahweh's name.

Genesis 12:12
It will happen, when the Egyptians will see you, that they will say, 'This is his wife.' They will kill me, but they will save you alive.

Genesis 12:14
It happened that when Abram had come into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

Genesis 12:15
The princes of Pharaoh saw her, and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.

Genesis 12:16
He dealt well with Abram for her sake. He had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and she-asses, and camels.

Genesis 13:4
to the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first. There Abram called on the name of Yahweh.

Genesis 21:33
Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Yahweh, the Everlasting God.

Genesis 28:19
He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

Genesis 35:3
Let us arise, and go up to Bethel. I will make there an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went."

Joshua 7:2
Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Bethel, and spoke to them, saying, Go up and spy out the land. The men went up and spied out Ai.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee,.... Or ask "a sprig of the earth" n, any shrub, or tree, or whatsoever grows out of it, and they will all unite in this doctrine, that they are raised and preserved by the power of God, and are so many instances of his wisdom, power, and goodness:

and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee; as mute as they are, they will proclaim this truth, that God is the mighty Maker and wise Disposer of them.

n שיח לארץ "virgultum terrae", Pagninus, Schmidt; so Drusius and Michaelis.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee - Perhaps this appeal to the earth may mean, as Stuhlman supposes, that the same thing is shown in the productions of the earth, as in the case of fierce animals. Noxious weeds and useless plants are more thrifty than the plants which are useful and the growth of poisonous or annoying things on the earth illustrates the same thing as the dealings of God with people - that his dealings are not in accordance with the real nature of objects.

And the fishes of the sea - The same thing is manifested in the sea, where the mighty prey upon the feeble, and the fierce and the ferocious overcome the defenseless. The sentiment is that it is a great principle which pervades all things that the ferocious the strong, the wicked, are often prospered, while the weak, the defenseless, the innocent, the pious, are subject to calamities, and that God does not apportion his dealings to the exact character of his creatures. Undoubtedly Job was right in this. and this general principle might be seen then as now, to pervade the world.