Job 12:5

There is contempt for misfortune in the thought of him that is at ease,

It awaiteth them who are slipping with their foot.

Zophar's references for Job's advantage to the Divine wisdom and might implied that Job was ignorant of all this, and took no account of Job's past life spent in the fellowship of God and in meditation on His ways. It is to this last that Job refers when he says: I who called on God, &c. He feels keenly the pass he has come to when men inculcate such commonplaces upon him; this feeling he expresses by saying, I am to be, I must be, or have to be a laughing-stock.

Job 12:5 means, But such is the treatment which those who fall into misfortune, even though they be righteous men, receive at the hands of those that are at ease and prosperous. The word rendered "misfortune" or calamity occurs again, ch. Job 30:24; Job 31:29; Proverbs 24:22. On the slipping of the foot, cf. Psalms 38:16; Psalms 73:2.