Job 28:12

Verse Job 28:12. But where shall wisdom be found?] It is most evident that the terms wisdom and understanding are used here in a widely different sense from all those arts and sciences which have their relation to man in his animal and social state, and from all that reason and intellect by which man is distinguished from all other animals. Now as these terms חכמה chochmah, wisdom, and בינה binah, understanding or discernment, are often applied in the sacred writings in their common acceptations, we must have recourse to what Job says of them, to know their meaning in this place. In Job 28:28, he says, The fear of the Lord is WISDOM, and to depart from evil is UNDERSTANDING. We know that the fear of the Lord is often taken for the whole of that religious reverence and holy obedience which God prescribes to man in his word, and which man owes to his Maker. Hence the Septuagint render חכמה chochmah, wisdom, by θεοσεβια, Divine worship; and as to a departure from evil, that is necessarily implied in a religious life, but it is here properly distinguished, that no man might suppose that a right faith, and a proper performance of the rites of religious worship, is the whole of religion. No. They must not only worship God in the letter, but also in the spirit; they must not only have the form, but also the power of godliness: and this will lead them to worship God in spirit and truth, to walk in his testimonies, and abstain from every appearance of evil; hence they will be truly happy: so that wisdom is another word for happiness. Now these are things which man by study and searching could never find out; they are not of an earthly origin. The spirit of a man, human understanding, may know the things of a man-those which concern him in his animal and social state: but the Spirit of God alone knows the things of God; and therefore WISDOM-all true religion-must come by Divine revelation, which is the mode of its attainment. Wisdom finds out the thing, and understanding uses and applies the means; and then the great end is obtained.