Job 12 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Then Job answered:

No question about it — you are the people who count, and when you die, wisdom dies with you.

I have a mind too, the same as you. I don't come up short next to any of you. And who doesn't already know things like these?

I am a joke to my own friends — the man who called on God and got an answer. A joke. The just man. The one with nothing to hide.

Disaster gets nothing but contempt from a man who is sitting comfortably — it is what he keeps ready for anyone whose foot has already started to slip.

Meanwhile the tents of raiders are left in peace, and the men who spit in God's face live secure — men who carry their god around in their own fist.

Go ask the animals — they will teach you. Ask the birds in the sky — they will tell you.

Or talk to the ground, and the ground will teach you. The fish in the sea will spell it out for you.

Which one of them doesn't know that the hand of Yahweh did all this?

In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human body.

Doesn't the ear taste words the way the mouth tastes food?

Wisdom belongs to gray heads, you keep saying. Understanding comes with a long life.

Wisdom is his. Strength is his. The advice and the understanding are his.

Whatever he tears down is not going back up. The man he shuts in — nobody opens that door.

He holds the water back, and everything dries out. He turns it loose, and it flips the land over.

Strength is his, and so is the understanding that actually works. The man who wanders off and the man who leads him off — both belong to him.

He walks advisers away stripped bare and turns judges into fools.

He unbuckles the belt of kings and ties a rag around their waists.

He walks priests away stripped bare and topples the men who have been standing the longest.

He takes the speech out of men everyone trusts and lifts the judgment right out of the elders.

He pours contempt over noblemen and loosens the belt of the strong.

He digs the deep things out of the dark and drags the shadow of death into daylight.

He makes nations great, then wipes them out. He spreads nations wide, then marches them off.

He takes the mind out of the men who lead a country and sets them wandering in an empty waste with no road in it.

They feel their way through the dark with no light in it. He has them staggering like drunks.