Job 28:20 Meaning and Explanation

Job restates his great question almost word for word from earlier in the poem. Since wisdom cannot be mined from the earth or bought with any treasure, from where does it come? Where is the place of understanding? The repetition presses the question home with new urgency.

Asking the question a second time, after the long list of treasures, makes the reader feel the weight of the search and the depth of the need. Job will not let the matter rest with a shrug. Wisdom is too important to leave unfound. By circling back to the question, he prepares to give the only true answer, the answer he has been leading toward all along. The repeated asking is itself a teaching: the most necessary thing in life deserves our most earnest seeking, and that seeking must finally turn toward God.