Job 28
1 “Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold that they refine. 2 Iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted from the ore. 3 Man puts an end to darkness and searches out to the farthest limit the ore in gloom and deep darkness. 4 He opens shafts in a valley away from where anyone lives; they are forgotten by travelers; they hang in the air, far away from mankind; they swing to and fro. 5 As for the earth, out of it comes bread, but underneath it is turned up as by fire. 6 Its stones are the place of sapphires, and it has dust of gold. 7 “That path no bird of prey knows, and the falcon's eye has not seen it. 8 The proud beasts have not trodden it; the lion has not passed over it. 9 “Man puts his hand to the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots. 10 He cuts out channels in the rocks, and his eye sees every precious thing. 11 He dams up the streams so that they do not trickle, and the thing that is hidden he brings out to light. 12 “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? 13 Man does not know its worth, and it is not found in the land of the living. 14 The deep says, ‘It is not in me,’ and the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’ 15 It cannot be bought for gold, and silver cannot be weighed as its price. 16 It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or sapphire. 17 Gold and glass cannot equal it, nor can it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold. 18 No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal; the price of wisdom is above pearls. 19 The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it, nor can it be valued in pure gold. 20 “From where, then, does wisdom come? And where is the place of understanding? 21 It is hidden from the eyes of all living and concealed from the birds of the air. 22 Abaddon and Death say, ‘We have heard a rumor of it with our ears.’ 23 “God understands the way to it, and he knows its place. 24 For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. 25 When he gave to the wind its weight and apportioned the waters by measure, 26 when he made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder, 27 then he saw it and declared it; he established it, and searched it out. 28 And he said to man, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.’”
Introduction
What is the most important thing in your life? What is the most valuable thing in your life? To what are you most devoted? What, more than anything else, do you strive for? Do you live for? Would you risk everything for?
Here, at the center of the book of Job, is a poem that I think asks us to wrestle with these questions. Fundamentally, it is a poem about the elusiveness, and yet simplicity, of Godly wisdom.
I will start with a few comments about the poem itself. There is something of a debate in scholarly circles about whether this is a continuation of Job’s speech from chapter 27. There seems to be something of a shift in content and tone. And in chapter 29, we are reintroduced to Job as he begins speaking again. This has caused some scholars to wonder if, in fact, chapter 28 is a kind of interlude in the book—a moment where the author breaks in and speaks in his own voice. Obviously, the editors of the ESV have suggested their position in the chapter title. Personally, I lean toward it being an interlude from the author. Ultimately, I don’t think the answer to this question matters one way or the other—though I think wrestling with it has helped me to understand the function of the poem.
It is connected to the story of Job in a slightly different way than the cycles of speeches. We’ve been travelling along for several weeks with Job and his three friends through three cycles of speeches in which a friend speaks and Job seems to respond (though not always directly). The intensity of these debates increased with each round until, in chapter 27, Job seems to scream in frustration at God. When chapter 29 picks up again with Job, he will return to the first person and to a final cycle of speeches in which he makes a last defense of his righteousness, is reprimanded by a new friend—Elihu—and then listens to God’s speeches from the whirlwind.
But chapter 28 rests here, nestled in between the two sets of speeches. It is a poem in 6 stanzas. However, I think the first five stanzas alternate between two themes—the location of wisdom and the value of wisdom, and so I will take them together. The last stanza provides something of an answer to the questions.
1. Location: “But where shall wisdom be found?”
Cleverly, the author builds in anticipation of this question in verse 12. Verses 1-6:
Surely there is a mine for silver,
and a place for gold that they refine.
Iron is taken out of the earth,
and copper is smelted from the ore.
Man puts an end to darkness
and searches out to the farthest limit
the ore in gloom and deep darkness.
He opens shafts in a valley away from where anyone lives;
they are forgotten by travelers;
they hang in the air, far away from mankind; they swing to and fro.
What is the author’s point? Humanity is good at finding things. There is not a piece of ground in which we are not digging. We are innovators. We are industrious. When we are looking for something valuable, we turn over every stone to find it. There is not a dark place on this earth that we will not shine a light in pursuit. In the words of verses 7 and 8, there is no help from the beasts of the earth in finding what we want. And verses 9-10: we keep building and working and looking.
But what are we looking for? The answer finally gets made explicit in the question of verse 12:
But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Again, this idea is repeated in verse 20:
From where, then, does wisdom come?
And where is the place of understanding?
We may be good at looking, at unearthing, but we have not found it. Where can we find the wisdom that satisfies us? Where is its source? Verses 21 and 22 give us a clue. We, the living, have no access to it on our own. Even Death has only heard a rumor of it. In all our pursuit of all worldly knowledge, we need to understand that it is not the same thing as the Godly wisdom here in Job 28.
For years now, we have heard about being in a knowledge-based economy. And as a species, we are incredible at harvesting knowledge—just like the people described in the first few verses of this poem. The U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics maps an exponential increase in the pursuit of education. In 1910, there were about 950 secondary institutions. In 2010, there were about 4600. In 1910, enrollment at secondary institutions was just over 350,000, and in 2010: just over 21 million. In 1910, there were fewer than 450 people in doctoral programs. In 2010, it is almost 164,000.
Or maybe we should measure it is actual stores of knowledge. After the war of 1812 finally ended, in 1814, the Library of Congress restarted its collection with about 6500 books from Thomas Jefferson’s collection. Today, there are 158 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves. Or looking at it from a data storage standpoint, IBM released a white paper in 2006 in which they predict that very soon the world’s base of information double every 11 hours.
The truth is: We are an amazing species. And yet, for all our pursuit of knowledge, for all our hunger for it, true wisdom is still beyond our grasp.
2. Value: “Man does not know its worth.”
While this theme does not have the rhetorical emphasis provided by the two questions, it is still an important theme to grasp. It really comes out in verses 15-19:
It cannot be bought for gold,
and silver cannot be weighed as its price.
It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir,
in precious onyx or sapphire.
Gold and glass cannot equal it,
nor can it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold.
No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal;
the price of wisdom is above pearls.
The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it,
nor can it be valued in pure gold.
How do we measure value? The most expensive auction item in the world was a Picasso that went for $160.5 million. But of course, that’s art. How about other things? There are diamond-encrusted mobile phones that sell for $3 million. There are parking spots in Manhattan that are priced and sold at over a million dollars. According to Forbes, there are 1,342 billionaires in the world right now. At the top of the list is a Mexican telecom mogul at $73 billion. But again, how do we measure the value of wisdom?
The argument of the poem is that wisdom is more valuable than we can measure. All the gold and precious stones in the world are not enough to purchase it.
3. An Answer
Bringing the themes together: the value of true wisdom is beyond our capacity to measure and place of true wisdom is beyond our grasp. We are left with two questions—two longings. How much is real wisdom worth? And where might we find it? And then the answer comes in verses 23-28:
God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.
For he looks to the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
When he gave to the wind its weight
and apportioned the waters by measure,
when he made a decree for the rain
and a way for the lightning of the thunder,
then he saw it and declared 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.’
There it is. In God, we have access to true wisdom. Indeed, it is by our relationship to God that wisdom is here defined. That last phrase is a fascinating one.
…the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
and to turn away from evil is understanding.
What does it mean to fear God? Famously, when Martin Luther considered this concept, he made a distinction between servile fear (defined as anxiety or fright caused by imminent danger or judgment, like that between a slave and a master) and filial fear (defined as a fear of displeasing or offending someone out of a sense of intimate relationship, like that between a son and a father). It is this latter concept—filial fear—that we find here and all of wisdom literature. Or as that great biblical resource Wikipedia puts it: “Fear of God is the idea of living in respect, awe, and submission to a deity.” If we look around the Bible for similar uses of this concept, we find that fear is used overwhelmingly in reference to God and it carries the connotations of keeping his ways (Isaiah 63:17), keeping his ordinances (Psalm 19:10), hating evil (Proverbs 8:13), and a kind of rigorous discipline (Proverbs 15:33). Fearing God, in the sense of obeying his revealed word to us, is something we do because we care about him. It is the very definition of reverence and devotion to him and his ways.
This reverence becomes even clearer in the second phrase. The first application of fearing God in the pursuit of true wisdom is turning away from evil. It’s deceptively simple. Flee. Do whatever you can to avoid those things which draw you into sin. In a moment, in the Lord’s Prayer, we will ask that he may lead us away from temptation. Do you mean that? There may be a cost to walking away from temptation. Do you mean it?
Importantly, the wisdom literature of the Bible is in agreement on this point. We find very nearly identical sentiments—that wisdom is defined as the fear of the Lord—in Psalm 111:10, at the summary point of Proverbs in 1:7 (as well as 9:10 and 15:33), and as the conclusion of Ecclesiastes (12:13-14). Likewise, each of those books makes strong cases for fleeing from sin.
So, do you want access to that most valuable, and yet most unreachable of assets? Do you pray for wisdom from God because you have some decision to make and you think that is the pious thing to do (and I don’t say that derisively, it is a very good and pious thing to do)? Well, this chapter has something to offer us. Wisdom is found in the fear of the Lord. We need not stop at just asking for wisdom—we can begin to live it out by fearing him, by keeping his commands, by turning away from evil.
Conclusion
Remember the questions I asked you at the beginning: what is the most important thing in your life? What is the most valuable thing in your life? To what are you most devoted? What, more than anything else, do you strive for? Do you live for? Would you risk everything for? For some of us, it is the job. For some of us, it is a sport (though, typically not here at the University of Chicago). For some of us it is an instrument, or a particular skill, or a reputation. For some of us it is money or power or sex. For some of us, it is family—a spouse or a child—or friends. For some of us, it is proving that we are smart…or good…or loved.
Where is Godly wisdom in your priorities? Or to put in terms of this book, how much are you like Job? This is precisely how Job is described three times in the first two chapters (once by the author and twice by God): he is a man who “fears God” and “turns away from evil.” So, what role does the fear of God play in your life? How good are you at turning away from evil?
For most of us—probably all of us—the answers to these questions are probably not such that we would be proud of them.
Thank God for the gospel. The New Testament understands the math of wisdom and fear and turning away from evil like this. Christ is wisdom from God. This was Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 1:22-25, which he heard read earlier:
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For all our ingenuity, for all our innovation as a species, for all our capacity to accumulate wealth, we need but look to Christ, and him crucified, as wisdom. Yes, it may look like folly to the world, but a crucified savior is the revelation of God’s wisdom to his people. It is his demonstration of strength. In Christ, we have salvation. In Christ, we have the power of God. Because of Christ’s defeat of death, we have the ability and the calling to truly fear God and to truly turn away from evil.
We will be perfect? No. But in Christ, we also have forgiveness. And by comparison, all the wisdom of the world is folly. So, where are you going? What are you pursuing? Where does the wisdom of God, revealed in Christ’s death and resurrection, rank in your life?
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the loving gift of your Son and his sacrifice, that we may be in relationship with you. Lord, as your people, give us great wisdom. Give us the desire to fear you and to turn away from evil. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.