Job 12:12-13

12:12 Is not wisdom found among the aged? ¹ 

Does not long life bring understanding?

12:13 “With God ²  are wisdom and power;

counsel and understanding are his. ³ 

Job 32:7

32:7 I said to myself, ‘Age ⁴  should speak, ⁵ 

and length of years ⁶  should make wisdom known.’

Proverbs 12:15

12:15 The way of a fool ⁷  is right ⁸  in his own opinion, ⁹ 

but the one who listens to advice is wise. ¹⁰ 

Proverbs 19:20

19:20 Listen to advice ¹¹  and receive discipline,

that ¹²  you may become wise ¹³  by the end of your life. ¹⁴ 

Proverbs 27:10

27:10 Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend,

and do not enter your brother’s house in the day of your disaster;

a neighbor nearby is better than a brother far away. ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 42:2-5

42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request ¹⁶  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ¹⁷  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ¹⁸  42:3 Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.” 42:4 The prophet Jeremiah answered them, “Agreed! ¹⁹  I will indeed pray to the Lord your God as you have asked. I will tell you everything the Lord replies in response to you. ²⁰  I will not keep anything back from you.” 42:5 They answered Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not do just as ²¹  the Lord sends you to tell us to do.

Jeremiah 42:20

42:20 You are making a fatal mistake. ²²  For you sent me to the Lord your God and asked me, ‘Pray to the Lord our God for us. Tell us what the Lord our God says and we will do it.’ ²³ 

[12:12]  ¹ tn The statement in the Hebrew Bible simply has “among the aged – wisdom.” Since this seems to be more the idea of the friends than of Job, scholars have variously tried to rearrange it. Some have proposed that Job is citing his friends: “With the old men, you say, is wisdom” (Budde, Gray, Hitzig). Others have simply made it a question (Weiser). But others take לֹא (lo’) from the previous verse and make it the negative here, to say, “wisdom is not….” But Job will draw on the wisdom of the aged, only with discernment, for ultimately all wisdom is with God.

[12:13]  ² tn Heb “him”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[12:13]  ³ sn A. B. Davidson (Job, 91) says, “These attributes of God’s [sic] confound and bring to nought everything bearing the same name among men.”

[32:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “days.”

[32:7]  ⁵ tn The imperfect here is to be classified as an obligatory imperfect.

[32:7]  ⁶ tn Heb “abundance of years.”

[12:15]  ⁷ sn The way of a fool describes a headlong course of actions (“way” is an idiom for conduct) that is not abandoned even when wise advice is offered.

[12:15]  ⁸ sn The fool believes that his own plans and ideas are perfect or “right” (יָשָׁר, yashar); he is satisfied with his own opinion.

[12:15]  ⁹ tn Heb “in his own eyes.”

[12:15]  ¹⁰ tn Or “a wise person listens to advice” (cf. NIV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[19:20]  ¹¹ sn The advice refers in all probability to the teachings of the sages that will make one wise.

[19:20]  ¹² tn The proverb is one continuous thought, but the second half of the verse provides the purpose for the imperatives of the first half.

[19:20]  ¹³ tn The imperfect tense has the nuance of a final imperfect in a purpose clause, and so is translated “that you may become wise” (cf. NAB, NRSV).

[19:20]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “become wise in your latter end” (cf. KJV, ASV) which could obviously be misunderstood.

[27:10]  ¹⁵ sn The meaning of the verse is very difficult, although the translation is rather straightforward. It may simply be saying that people should retain family relationships but will discover that a friend who is available is better than a relative who is not. But C. H. Toy thinks that the verse is made up of three lines that have no connection: 10a instructs people to maintain relationships, 10b says not to go to a brother’s house [only?] when disaster strikes, and 10c observes that a nearby friend is better than a far-away relative. C. H. Toy suggests a connection may have been there, but has been lost (Proverbs [ICC], 485-86). The conflict between 17:17 and 10b may be another example of presenting two sides of the issue, a fairly frequent occurrence in the book of Proverbs.

[42:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

[42:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “on behalf of us, [that is] on behalf of all this remnant.”

[42:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “For we are left a few from the many as your eyes are seeing us.” The words “used to be” are not in the text but are implicit. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity and smoothness of English style.

[42:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “I have heard” = “I agree.” For this nuance of the verb see BDB 1034 s.v. שָׁמַע Qal.1.j and compare the usage in Gen 37:27 and Judg 11:17 listed there.

[42:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “all the word which the Lord will answer you.

[42:5]  ²¹ tn Heb “do according to all the word which.”

[42:20]  ²² tn Heb “you are erring at the cost of your own lives” (BDB 1073 s.v. תָּעָה Hiph.3 and HALOT 1626 s.v. תָּעָה Hif 4, and cf. BDB 90 s.v. בְּ 3 and see parallels in 1 Kgs 2:23; 2 Sam 23:17 for the nuance of “at the cost of your lives”). This fits the context better than “you are deceiving yourselves” (KBL 1035 s.v. תָּעָה Hif 4). The reading here follows the Qere הִתְעֵיתֶם (hit’etem) rather than the Kethib which has a metathesis of י (yod) and ת (tav), i.e., הִתְעֵתֶים. The Greek text presupposes הֲרֵעֹתֶם (hare’otem, “you have done evil”), but that reading is generally rejected as secondary.

[42:20]  ²³ tn Heb “According to all which the Lord our God says so tell us and we will do.” The restructuring of the sentence is intended to better reflect contemporary English style.