“Doth not the ear try words? and the mouth taste his meat?”
"Does not the ear test words as the palate tastes food?" Job reasserts that judgment and discernment are normal functions of human perception, not arrogant presumption. He is defending his right to evaluate his friends' arguments and find them wanting. The analogy suggests that the friends' words, when tasted by an honest ear, do not nourish but prove indigestible—they fail to satisfy when tested against lived reality.
Church Fathers on Job 12:11
The ear trieth words, and the mouth of the eater savour. 8. There is scarce a person that is ignorant that the five senses of our body, viz. of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching, in all their operations of perceiving and discriminating derive the power of perception and discrimination from the brain. And whereas there is but one judge that presides within, viz. the percipient faculty of the brain, yet by their proper passages he keeps five senses distinct, God…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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