Job 12:17-25: in context

In the middle of his suffering, Job pauses to describe the sheer scope of God's sovereignty, and the picture he paints is of a God utterly unimpressed by human power and wisdom. He leads counselors away stripped, Job says, and makes judges into fools. He looses the authority of kings and binds their waists with a rope. He leads priests away stripped and overthrows the mighty. He silences the trusted advisers and takes away the discernment of elders. He pours contempt on princes. He makes nations great and destroys them. He takes away the understanding of the leaders of the earth and makes them wander lost in a trackless wilderness, groping in the dark. Every category of human strength and wisdom, the counselor, the judge, the king, the priest, the sage, the prince, the nation, appears here entirely at God's disposal.

That is a bracing corrective to how much I invest in human power and expertise. I am tempted to be either overawed or terrified by the mighty and the wise of the earth, the leaders, the experts, the forces that seem to run everything, as though their strength and cleverness were the final word. Job says they are nothing of the sort. God can strip the wisest counselor of his wisdom in an instant, turn the shrewdest judge into a fool, unseat a king, topple a nation. The impressive human strengths I fear or trust in are held loosely in the hand of a God who gives understanding and takes it away, who raises the mighty and overthrows them at will.

That both humbles and steadies me. It humbles any confidence I place in human wisdom and might, my own included, since God can undo it in a moment. And it steadies me when the mighty and the clever of this world seem overwhelming and in control, because they are not; they are counselors God can strip and princes he can hold in contempt. Do I stand overawed or afraid before human power and wisdom, as though they were the last word, when Job's God can take away the understanding of the wise and topple the mighty whenever he chooses?