Job 28:22

Destruction and death say, &c.— In this and the following verses we have an answer to the great question, "Whence cometh wisdom?" But it opens to us by degrees. Destruction and death say, we have heard the same thereof with our ears. Destruction and death mean the dead: the metonymy is easy, and gives a clear and natural sense to the passage. He had just before told us, that wisdom and her place were hid from the eyes of all the living, and, therefore, where should we go to seek for it, but among the dead? The synonymous words Destruction and death are used, probably, after the Hebrew manner, to increase the signification, and to denote a long race of their dead ancestors from the beginning of the world downward. "The generations of men (says Job,) who have lived before us, and are now gone to the regions of the dead, have told us, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears; that is, we have had something relating to this question about wisdom delivered down to us by tradition from our forefathers." That this must be the meaning, can scarcely be doubted, when it is considered what a regard is paid, throughout this whole dispute, by every speaker and in every speech almost, to what was taught them by their ancestors; from whom, in a manner, all their wisdom was derived, transmitted down, and received with a religious veneration; so that the citing of their authority in favour of the point in question, was looked upon as an unanswerable argument: nor is this any wonder, considering what a short remove they were from the very fountain-head of their traditions, and that those, when traced to their beginning, carried with them a divine authority: for, whether derived from Adam or from Noah, as the first, in his state of innocence at least, was admitted to a free converse with his Maker; so the other was a prophet, to whom God was pleased to reveal himself in a very singular manner; and therefore the instructions conveyed down from these must needs have been esteemed as oracles; and those who had the advantage of living nearest to them, and so were supposed to have received the greatest share of this traditional knowledge, must, of course, have been looked upon as the wisest men. See Peters, and the note on chap. Job 8:8.