No doubt but ye [are] the people, and wisdom shall die with you.
Ver. 2. No doubt but ye are the people] The select peculiar people, the only ones, as a man is put for a good man, Jeremiah 5:1, a wife for a good wife, Proverbs 18:22, a name for a good name, Ecclesiastes 7:1. As Athens was said to be the Greece of Greece, and as one promising to show his friend all Athens at once, showed him Solon; or as the Latin poet, saying of Fabius Maximus,
Hic patria est, murique urbis stant pectore in uno (Silius).
So saith Job by a holy jeer (not to disgrace his friends, but to bring them to more modesty and moderation, if it might be), Certes, ye are not one or two men, but specimen totius orbis, an epitome of the world, or at least the representative of some whole people (Vatablus); ye have got away all the wit from myself and others, whom ye look upon as so many wild ass's colts in comparison of yourselves. Thus the pope (Simon Magus like) pretends to be some great thing, Acts 8:9, even the Church virtual; and that in his breast, as in Noah's ark, is comprehended all wisdom and worth. Ye know nothing at all, saith he (Caiaphas-like), to all others, John 11:49. So do his janizaries, the Jesuits, who will needs be taken for the only scholars, politicians, and orators of the world. The Church, say they, is the soul of the world; the clergy, of the Church; and we, of the clergy; the empire of learning is ours, &c.
And wisdom shall die with you] As being locked up in your bosoms. Suetonius telleth us of Palaemon, the grammarian, that he was heard to say that learning was born with him, and would die with him. The Gnostics would needs be held the only knowing men; Illuminates, in Spain, the only spiritual men; Swenkfeldians, in Germany, styled themselves the confessors of the glory of Christ; our Antinomians, the hearers of the gospel, and of free grace. But what saith Solomon? "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth," Proverbs 27:2. And that which had been much to a man's commendation if from another, soundeth very slenderly from himself, saith Pliny. Aben Ezra and Rabbi Levi set another sense upon this verse, as if it were no irony, but a plain assertion to this effect: Questionless you are to be counted among the common sort of people. See John 7:49. Neither is there in you anything excellent or extraordinary, that ye should be looked upon as drained from the dregs or sifted from the brans of the very vulgar; your wisdom, if ever you had any, is even dead and decayed with you, and you have outlived your prime, &c.