Job 28:22 Commentary and Bible Study

Interestingly Job pictures destruction and death as knowing something about wisdom, but being unable to convey any meaningful message about it. They can give a report of its existence and this report reaches the ears of those who are still in the world, so that they are able to say, there is such a thing as wisdom, but death cannot give any clear explanation of it and is unable to impart it to those who lack it. Man who is aware of death and hell can learn something of the existence of wisdom but he cannot obtain it. Death and tragedy are the most sobering things in life. Man, just for a moment, is interested in wisdom, but even then only the faintest glimmering of it. When man is at his most sober, he just about knows that he has not got it. In teaching us this lesson death carries out its God-given task, but it cannot impart wisdom, because if it really contained knowledge, it would have delivered men and women to life. Where are people more acutely aware of the need for life than in death and hell? And yet they are unable to reach it.