Job 12:23

God could and did make nations great, and then as He saw fit, destroy them. He could enlarge the nations and guide them too. But then He could take away the understanding of the chiefs of the people. That leaves the nation on a wandering wilderness path, groping in the dark without light, made to stagger like a drunkard (vv. 23-25). So the nations are an object lesson for all mankind. God blesses them and they become proud of themselves, and so they need the humbling dealings of God.

There are all kinds of change. There is nothing, then, that shows the settled judgment of God. Everything among men is in a state of flux — a constant flow and change. So nothing could be more foolish than the basis of the three friends' attack on Job… And that is what happens where people trust in men.

From verse 13 to the end of this chapter Job reviewed the ways of God in His dealings with men. He acknowledged that "wisdom and strength" are His, and so are "counsel and understanding." Yet he felt that the way God uses these wonderful qualities was full of mystery… He lived in days when, after the flood, nations had come into being. He had seen such increased and then destroyed. Now why was this?

The apostle asserts one true God and one common race. Their fears, their independence from God, and their self-centred confidence in man… brought on dispersion through the different languages, in their lands, after their tongues, their families, and their nations. Up to the flood mankind was only one community… God had not yet set up government as a human institution holding authority from Him. When He did, it was left neither to fate nor to chance, but He determined the seasons, and the limits of their dwelling. Job 12:23 and what follows shows, from early days, how clearly those who feared God knew this.

It is worth comparing how Job handles the same truth in general (Job 12:23-25). He dwells more on the side of God's sovereignty. The nations may be proud and indifferent towards Him, yet to Him they are "like a drop from a bucket," and are accounted "as the dust on the scales" (Isa. 40:15). But the inspired preacher, with glowing heat, presses the moral aim of God's generous arrangements on the grandest scale: that they might seek Him, and perhaps feel after Him and find Him.

He says of God, "He uncovers deep things out of darkness, and brings the shadow of death to light" (v. 22). Job was living through the pangs of darkness himself. He could not uncover deep things from the darkness, nor bring light from the shadow of death. But he realised God can do this. Could He not do it in Job's case? Yes indeed, and He did so before long.