But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you: yea, who knows not such things as these?
Read Chapter 12
Didymus the Blind
AD 398
Job wants to reveal their wrong perceptions with the words, “But I have understanding as well as you,” and still I do not think the same thoughts as you. Or do you think that your thinking is unsurpassed? I am reasonable too, and reason is not different from reason, but the difference is in the application. So it is said for example about the evil ones, “Listen to me, you stubborn of heart,” for not the creature but its evil activity he calls “stubbornness of heart.” - "Commentary on Job 12.3"
45. For who is ignorant how greatly the practice and the knowledge of blessed Job excels the knowledge that his friends have? Now in order to correct their pride, he asserts that he is ‘not inferior’ to them, and lest he should transgress the limits of his own humility, he keeps to himself that he is superior to them; not by setting himself above, but by equalling himself to them, he points out what they should learn concerning themselves, who are far unlike to him; that whereas that wisdom which is high is voluntarily bowed down, the knowledge which lies grovelling may never erect itself against the nature of its powers, and he does well that he immediately recalls these to a sense of their equal condition, reflecting that they are swoln to excess as if for singurality in greatness, when he afterwards proceeds,
Yea, who knoweth not such things as these that ye know?
46. As though he said in plain words; Since what ye say is known to all men, wherefore are ye puffed up by the know...
