Albert Barnes Commentary Job 12:2

"No doubt but ye are the people, And wisdom shall die with you." — Job 12:2 (ASV)

No doubt but you are the people – that is, the only wise people. You have engrossed all the wisdom of the world, and everyone else is to be regarded as fools. This is evidently the language of severe sarcasm, and it shows a spirit fretted and chafed by their reproaches. Job felt contempt for their reasoning and meant to imply that their maxims, on which they placed so much reliance, were commonplace and such as everyone was familiar with.

And wisdom shall die with you – This is ironic, but it is language such as is common perhaps everywhere. “The people of the East,” says Roberts, “take great pleasure in irony, and some of their satirical sayings are very cutting. When a sage implies that he has superior wisdom or when he is disposed to rally another for his meager attainments, he says, ‘Yes, yes, you are the man!’ ‘Your wisdom is like the sea.’ ‘When you die, where will wisdom go?’” In a serious sense, language like this is used by Classical writers to describe the death of eminently great or good men. They speak of wisdom, bravery, piety, or music as dying with them. Thus, Moschus, Idyll. iii. 12.

Ὅττι βίων τέθνηκεν ὁ βώκολος, ἔττι σὺν αὐτῷ

Καὶ τὸ μέλος τέθνακε, καὶ ὤλετο Δωρίς ἀειδός.

Hotti biōn tethnēken ho bōkolos, esti sun autō

Kai to melos tethnake, kai ōleto Dōris aeidos.

“Bion the shepherd is dead, and with him song

Has died, and the Doric muse has perished.”

Expressions like these are common. Thus, in the “Pleasures of Hope” it is said:

And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell.