Job 28
About JobWritten by AI
Job is a long poem framed by a short story. A good man loses his wealth, his children, and his health, and no one tells him why. The writer and the date are unknown: the story is set in the age of the patriarchs, but the book may have been written much later, and Christians hold different views on when. Some Jewish tradition credits Moses.
After two prose chapters, Job and three friends trade speeches in rounds. The friends insist suffering must be punishment for sin; Job insists he is innocent and pleads for God to answer him. A younger man, Elihu, speaks next. Then the LORD Himself answers out of the whirlwind, and the story closes in prose.
Read the friends with care. They say many true things about God, but they apply them wrongly, and at the end God says they have not spoken of Him accurately as Job has (42:7). Watch for Job's flashes of hope in the dark: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”
Before you read Job 28Written by AI
A quiet poem in the middle of the storm. People can mine silver and gold from deep in the earth, but where can wisdom be found? It cannot be bought or dug up; only God knows its place. The answer comes at the end: the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and turning from evil is understanding.
Where Can Wisdom Be Found?
“Surely there is a mine for silver
and a place where gold is refined.
Iron is taken from the earth,
and copper is smelted from ore.
Man puts an end to the darkness;
he probes the farthest recesses
for ore in deepest darkness.
Far from human habitation he cuts a shaft
in places forgotten by the foot of man.
Far from men he dangles and sways.
Food may come from the earth,
but from below it is transformed as by fire.
Its rocks are the source of sapphires,
containing flecks of gold.
No bird of prey knows that path;
no falcon’s eye has seen it.
Proud beasts have never trodden it;
no lion has ever prowled over it.
The miner strikes the flint;
he overturns mountains at their base.
He hews out channels in the rocks,
and his eyes spot every treasure.
He stops up the sources of the streams
to bring what is hidden to light.
But where can wisdom be found,
and where does understanding dwell?
No man can know its value,
nor is it found in the land of the living.
The ocean depths say, ‘It is not in me,’
while the sea declares, ‘It is not with me.’
It cannot be bought with gold,
nor can its price be weighed out in silver.
It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir,
in precious onyx or sapphire.
Neither gold nor crystal can compare to it,
nor jewels of fine gold be exchanged for it.
Coral and quartz are unworthy of mention;
the price of wisdom is beyond rubies.
Topaz from Cush cannot compare to it,
nor can it be valued in pure gold.
From where, then, does wisdom come,
and where does understanding dwell?
It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing
and concealed from the birds of the air.
Abaddon and Death say,
‘We have heard a rumor about it.’
But God understands its way,
and He knows its place.
For He looks to the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
When God fixed the weight of the wind
and measured out the waters,
when He set a limit for the rain
and a path for the thunderbolt,
then He looked at wisdom and appraised it;
He established it and searched it out.
And He said to man, ‘Behold,
the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
and to turn away from evil is understanding.’”