The godly patriarch Job lived in the early centuries after the Flood, and he frequently makes passing reference to the events of those difficult times. The twelfth chapter of Job is especially intriguing in this regard.
For example, verse 12 may refer indirectly to Shem, who lived 502 years after the Flood (Genesis 11:10-11). "With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days is understanding." The coming of the Flood is suggested in verse 14: "Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again: he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening." The latter clause could even refer to God's shutting the door of Noah's Ark (Genesis 7:16), thereby shutting off forever the ancient wicked world to him and his descendants. The next verse describes the Flood itself. "He sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth" (Job 12:15).
Then verse 20 seems to refer to the later confusion of tongues at Babel: "He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged." Finally, verses 23-25 sketch the plight of those forced to scatter from Babel into the uncharted wilderness: "He enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again. He . . . causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way. They grope in the dark without light." Job 30:3 and 6 also refers to them, "fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste. . . . To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the rocks." The remains of some of these cave dwellers have been found in their cave homes by modern anthropologists. However, they were not primitive "ape-men," as evolutionists have imagined, but fugitives from Babel.
The Bible, not anthropological speculation, gives us the true histories of early man and the ancient nations. HMM