“No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.”
Job's declaration that wisdom and understanding belong to him too challenges the friends' fundamental assumption that his suffering disqualifies him from truth-telling. He insists on his rational competence and moral consciousness despite their condemnation. This verse reasserts human dignity in the face of friends who have reduced him to a cautionary tale of retributive justice, laying groundwork for his later claim to argue his case before God as an equal party in debate.
Church Fathers on Job 12:2
No doubt but ye are the only men, and wisdom shall die with you. Whosoever reckons himself to excel all men in the faculty of reason, what else does such a man but exult that he is the ‘only Man?’ And it often happens that when the mind is borne on high through pride, it is uplifted in contempt of all men, and in admiration of self. For self-applause springs up in the imagination, and folly is itself its own flatterer for singularity of wisdom. It ponders all that it has…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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