Bible Commentaries

Job 12:7-8

I. The great lesson which the animal creation, regarded simply as the creature and subject of God, is fitted to teach us, is a lesson of the wisdom, and power, and constant beneficence of God. Job sends us to the animal creation that we may gather from it instances of the greatness of the Creator's hand and the constancy of the Creator's providence. For every creature there is a place, and to this each is adapted with transcendent skill and beneficence. Nowhere do we detect a fault or a flaw amid all these teeming myriads. All are perfectly complete, and attest the majesty of Him by whose hand they have been formed.

II. Consider the lessons which the lower animals are fitted to teach us by the way in which they spend their life and use the powers which God has given them. (1) They constantly and unceasingly fulfil the end of their being. Be their sphere large or small, they always occupy it to the full. What a lesson is here addressed to man, and what a rebuke to him for the studied and persevering neglect he manifests of the purpose for which God has made him and sent him into the world! (2) The lower animals are seen always to live according to their nature. They neither transgress that nature, nor do they fall short of it. Can this be said of man? How far is the best from yielding his entire nature in its symmetry and its fulness to what truth and righteousness demand of him. (3) The lower animals teach us to seek happiness according to our nature and capacity, and with a prudent foresight to avoid occasions of disaster and sorrow. Let us not despise the reproof because it comes from a humble source, but rather let the humility of the source enhance the pungency of the reproof, and appeal to us with a more cogent conclusiveness to bethink ourselves and turn into a wiser and better course.

W. Lindsay Alexander, Pulpit Analyst, vol. i., p. 488.

References: Job 12:8.—H. Macmillan, Bible Teachings in Nature, p. 152; G. Morrison, The House of God, p. 113. Job 12:9, Job 12:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi., No. 326. Job 12:20.—G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 165. Job 12:22.—J. Martineau, Hours of Thought, vol. ii., p. 348. Job 12-14—S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. v., pp. 172, 273; Ibid., Commentary on Job, p. 149. Job 13:14.—J. Robertson, Expositor, 2nd series, vol. vi., p. 256.