12:2 ye are the people. This is one of the very few instances of sarcasm or satire in the Bible. A few others are found (I Kings 18:27; Jeremiah 2:27,28; etc.), but there are not many.

12:7 teach thee. The beasts, the fowls, the fishes, and the earth itself had been placed under man’s dominion (Genesis 1:26,28). To exercise that dominion, men would need first of all to learn from the creation its physical and biological processes.

12:9 Who knoweth not. In the scientific study of zoology, geology, and the other sciences, the most obvious lesson they will teach an honest student is the truth of their special creation by an omnipotent, omniscient Creator.

12:10 breath of all mankind. Compare Acts 17:28. Job’s concept of God certainly was different from the pantheism carried from Babel to most of the world. Job recognized God as Creator, not as part of nature.

12:14 no opening. After speaking of the creation (Job 12:7-10), Job seems to have thought of his ancestor Noah, and the great Flood. The Lord permanently “broke down” the antediluvian civilization so that it could not be “built again.” Then He “shut him in” (Genesis 7:16) the ark, the one man in that world who had obeyed God.

12:15 overturn the earth. God had “withheld the waters” in the primeval “waters above the firmament” (Genesis 1:7), so that there was no “rain upon the earth” (Genesis 2:5) in the antediluvian period. But then, when the iniquity of the antediluvian people was full, He sent the waters out and they overturned the earth!

12:20 removeth away the speech. This possibly refers to the confusion of tongues at Babel. The previous verse (Job 12:19) had said God “overthroweth the mighty,” possibly referring to Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the LORD” (Genesis 10:9), whose rebellion against God had led God to confuse the languages and disperse the nations from Babel.

12:23 increaseth the nations. This verse may well refer to the Table of Nations (Genesis 10), when suddenly the one nation at Babel was changed into about seventy nations.

12:23 enlargeth the nations. Japheth’s descendants were to be “enlarged” (Genesis 9:27).

12:24 wander in a wilderness. Except for the fertile plains of Shinar and the Nile Valley, the world after the Flood was largely an uncharted wilderness. It was into this that God scattered the rebelling tribes at Babel.

12:25 grope in the dark. Many of the scattering tribes had to live in caves for a time. These may well have been the so-called “cave-men,” exploited by the evolutionists as primitive ape-men, in spite of the fact that their remains and artifacts are fully human.