12 “Wisdom is with aged men,
With long life is understanding.
13 “With Him are wisdom and might;
To Him belong counsel and understanding.
14 “Behold, He tears down, and it cannot be rebuilt;
He imprisons a man, and there can be no release.
15 “Behold, He restrains the waters, and they dry up;
And He sends them out, and they inundate the earth.
16 “With Him are strength and sound wisdom,
The misled and the misleader belong to Him.
17 “He makes counselors walk barefoot
And makes fools of judges.
18 “He loosens the bond of kings
And binds their loins with a girdle.
19 “He makes priests walk barefoot
And overthrows the secure ones.
20 “He deprives the trusted ones of speech
And takes away the discernment of the elders.
21 “He pours contempt on nobles
And loosens the belt of the strong.
22 “He reveals mysteries from the darkness
And brings the deep darkness into light.
23 “He makes the nations great, then destroys them;
He enlarges the nations, then leads them away.
24 “He deprives of intelligence the chiefs of the earth’s people
And makes them wander in a pathless waste.
25 “They grope in darkness with no light,
And He makes them stagger like a drunken man.