Job 12:17

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"He... maketh the judges fools." Job 12:17

This is for their good. If they were not rebuked, they would go on from one presumption to another, until they utterly forgot themselves and idolised their own ability. It is good for the wise man to be made to know the measure of his wisdom, and for the judge to step down sometimes amongst the common people, and to own that there are questions too high for him. The word "judges" should not be limited to the merely judicial function, as exercised in courts of law. The principle covers a large area. It includes, for example, all theologians; they should not stand up as men who know everything, and to whom is given the treasure of heavenly mystery, to be expended as they please: they are most influential when they are least presumptuous: they should claim to be fellow-readers, and fellow-students, and fellow-worshippers; and out of this sympathy with the common heart, they will acquire all true spiritual influence. We are taught, by this divine visitation, not to put our confidence oven in men who occupy supreme positions: we may have come to them at a time, when their wits were bewildered, and their judgment had been turned upside down. God does not take away their title, but he depletes it of all meaning and force, so that they represent the most seductive and disastrous irony, being judges only in name, and not in faculty. It is clear that God will not give his glory unto another. The wise man is not to glory in his wisdom, nor the mighty man in his power. All flesh is to glory in the Lord. God recognises judges, leaders, princes, captains, men of pre-eminent power and influence; and he has never withheld from them the tribute which was due to all their greatness and utility: nay, he himself has been the author of that greatness, and has been pleased to confer the blessedness of utility upon the service of the chief in his household; yet he has never given his glory to another, in the sense of being unable to withdraw it; the greatest servant may be deposed in an hour; there is but a step between the strongest man and death. We are only judges in so far as we are docile students, reverential worshippers, patient waiters upon God. In all matters of Biblical judgment, the spiritual faculty is generally with those who are least in their own esteem; who, passing by all that is merely initial and instrumental, come at once upon the pith and reality of things: "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him." In all cases God has chosen the teachable spirit as his peculiar dwelling-place. What a lesson this is to all men in high position, in authority, children of fame, persons who suppose their castle to be founded upon rocks, and mighty men who scorn the idea of being brought down from their loftiness: "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall."