Job 28

Job starts with something in between Hamlet's "What a piece of work is man..." and Sophocles' "Manifold are the uncanny, yet nothing looms or stirs more uncanny than the human being...." Job describes the mighty works of man and sees them with a wonder and novelty as if he were an outside history and seeing it for the first time. If you think about it there is something unbelievable about man digging deep, deep into mountains to find jewels and training the soil to grow bread.

But Job is not praising man but setting up a contrast. In the first eleven verses it is about the infinite faculty of mankind to seek and find what he desires, but then at verse twelve he sets up what man cannot find:

But where shall wisdom be found?
and where is the place of understanding?
Man does not know its worth,
and it is not found in the land of the living. (28:11-12)

Job then goes on in verses 13 through 19 to say how impossible it is to buy wisdom and then in verse 20 asking logically (though rhetorically) "From where, then, does wisdom come? And where is the place is understanding?"

Now the answer might be considered Bible stereotype; it comes from God, of course; but in the context the answer is very significant because for the first time in a long time Job is recognizing God and praising Him. It is at the end of the chapter that Job states the origin of wisdom: "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding."