On the Complaints of Job and David 1.30–3.2

The abyss said, then, “It is not in me,” because the Lord himself said: “You will not leave my soul in hell.” And the apostle said: “Who will descend into the abyss? That is, to bring Christ up from the dead.” So if the abyss is asked: Where is wisdom? it answers: It is not in me, because he has risen. If the sea is asked: Where is wisdom? it says: It is not with me, because he trod on me and my waves could not trouble him. You too, then, placed in the strait of this world, do not seek that perfect wisdom of God in this world, because the world did not know it. But if you wish to find it, tread on the waves of this world, as Peter trod, and walk on the waters of this age. Wisdom will stretch out its right hand to you, as it stretched it out to Peter, because there was no one whom the wave of this world did not trouble. It troubled Abraham, it troubled Moses, it troubled Peter. Moses crossed through the sea and led an army on foot through the sea, but first he himself was troubled. Peter trod on the waters, but he had sunk in body, because he limped with the footstep of weaker faith. So do not seek wisdom in the sea, because the Lord Jesus did not say that he would be with the sea, but with his apostles, so that they might know him in some part, to whom he said: “Behold, I am with you until the end of the world.” Blessed are those with whom he is: would that he were with us too; but with us is the sea. Peter was with Christ, because he too trod on the sea; to us gold and silver are dear. But wisdom is above gold, not in gold. Therefore one who desired to have wisdom said: “Silver and gold I have not, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk.” Because he had no gold, he had in the name of Christ the grace of devout working. Therefore it is said to you too: “Draw wisdom into your inmost parts.” “It was hidden,” he says, “from every man, and concealed from the birds of heaven.” Neither men knew where it was nor angels, for they are the birds of heaven, of whom it is said: “And I saw an angel flying through heaven.”

No one could know wisdom, because “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” He revealed it, then, to John, with whom wisdom was, and therefore John said not what was his own but what wisdom poured into him: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Destruction does not know wisdom, malice does not know it. For destruction could not hold it, which said: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Malice does not know it, because it said: “The wicked will seek me and will not find me.” They can say: “We have heard of its glory.” God alone is the one who knows it. “Because God,” he says, “established its way well, he knows its place.” What the dwelling of wisdom is, hear from its disciple, saying: “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” For the Son knew the Father, because he himself says: “As the Father knows me, I also know the Father.” Equal is the measure of knowledge where there is unity of power. So the Father, who knows all things, the balance of the winds, the measure of the waters, himself saw wisdom and declared it through his prophets, because the Father declared wisdom and searched it out, just as the Son too declared the Father, whom nothing escapes, and said: O man, why do you wish to know the depths of wisdom, which are above you? “To fear God is wisdom, and to abstain from evil is discipline.”

Our earlier discussion was on the remonstrance of the saints: that the human condition is frail and feeble and has firmness nowhere except in heavenly protection. Today we must take up this: that the common run of men, and many even of the prudent, are greatly disturbed when they see the unjust abounding in prosperity and the just often afflicted in this world. And truly this is slippery ground, on which even the saints could hardly keep the footing of a true opinion. Indeed David himself was troubled, who had said above: “The hidden things of your wisdom you have made manifest to me.” Yet he afterwards steadied himself and searched out the way of perfect reasoning. Holy Job too wrestled in discourse over this opinion with those three old friends who had come to console him. Let us bring forward the discussions of both, then. For they are worthy to give us a lesson in living, since, placed in adversity, they merited to please God the more. Let us hear both, then, in their order.

Eliphaz king of the Temanites, Bildad tyrant of the Sauchaeans, and Zophar king of the Minaeans had rebuked holy Job vehemently, on the ground that he was suffering so great a punishment because of his sins. For with feeble understanding they did not notice that the Lord had given him over to be tempted, so that Christ’s athlete, trained by temptations, might come to the crown with greater glory. Not seeing so great a mystery of wisdom, then, and fearing with narrow heart lest they seem to accuse God of injustice for allowing an innocent man to be afflicted with punishments, they turned the grounds of punishment back upon holy Job. They said that the whole life of the wicked is in anxiety, and riches unjustly gathered will be vomited up; that whatever grievous things a man suffers on earth he suffers for his sins; that even if he is in prosperity, his good fortune cannot be made to last but vanishes quickly like a dream, so that his place is not found; that the joy of the wicked is a heavier ruin, and that therefore holy Job too had been changed from prosperity to adversity and had fallen, at the price of his offences, from the highest to the lowest; that he who asserted his innocence was slipping, since such is the portion of the wicked that the indignation coming upon him from the Lord snows sorrows upon him and destruction engulfs his house.

Holy Job heard these things and, like a strong athlete, sitting on the dunghill amid so many weals and the cruel pains of his wound, his whole body covered with dreadful sores, he spoke mysteries; he gave himself not to seeking remedies for his own sickness but to sacred discourse. So the words of the sick man were stronger than those of the men who were not sick. For they spoke of justice, but not according to knowledge; they preached God’s judgments, the punishments of the guilty, the rewards of the saints, but they did not know how to distinguish the guilty from the just. Indeed, the one whom the Lord God pronounced just they condemned for injustice and charged with iniquity. So they did not know what suited each case. But the holy man Job discerned by the Spirit how he ought to speak to each; so he was stronger than those who seemed sound and unharmed. And why do I say he was found stronger than the others? He was found stronger than himself; for Job sick was stronger than he had been healthy, according to what is written: that power is made perfect in weakness. So Job too, when he was weak, was then stronger. For he was not sick in mind, even though he suffered in body, because his soul was not in the flesh, to whose passions it did not cling, but in the spirit, with whose power it had clothed itself.

Therefore he spoke not the groans of the flesh and the weaknesses of the body but the voices of the spirit, with which to press, not to yield. And at first more gently, to make them ashamed, because they pressed the just man unjustly, saying that he was suffering less punishment than his sins deserved, and, sinners themselves, they did not blush to accuse the innocent falsely. “Suppose,” he says, “that I have erred, and that the misleader who pours errors into men’s minds dwells with me, so that I speak words I ought not, as you say, and my words go astray and my speech is not uttered fittingly: why do you leap upon me and revile me, not considering that this temptation has come to me from the Lord, who has thought fit to hedge me in with a kind of rampart of troubles? I am exercised by adversities, surrounded on every side by labors and dangers; and you insult me still, wishing to crush one whom you ought to help. Behold, I laugh at reproaches and will not speak or answer your revilings. For it is not you who judge; he who judges me is the Lord, and the time of his judgment has not yet come. What need is there to cry out before the judgment?” It is good to be silent while the judge is awaited; it is good not to return insult for insult, lest we too be numbered among the slanderers.

Let us imitate this man, then, who refuted his revilers by his silence. For he showed the strength of his mind, which insults did not move, and he made plain the innocence of his conscience, since he did not recognize the charges but laughed at them as foreign to himself. But we, as though something were being charged against us, make it worse while we try to clear ourselves; while we desire to avenge ourselves, we confess. For Scripture says that you should turn aside the word of disgrace and take away your garment; for the insolent man passes by. Let us be silent, then, so that he may pass by, lest, provoked, he burn our garment; for it is written: “Do not kindle the coals of a sinner, lest you be burned in the fire of his flame.” For this reason the saint is silent even though a slave is insolent; even though a poor man reviles, the just man is silent; even though a sinner hurls reproaches, the just man laughs; even though a weak man curses, the just man blesses. David was silent when Gera son of Shimei cursed him; Job laughed.

Paul blessed, as he himself says: “We are cursed, and we bless.” For by divine teaching the advance of human virtue had grown, because he had now come who would make the weak stronger, and Paul had heard him say: “Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who slander you.” What he said in word he proved by example. Indeed, placed on the cross, he said of his persecutors who reviled him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do,” so that he prayed for those who slandered him, whom he himself could forgive. Job, then, laughed, because Christ had not yet come, to whom alone the prerogative of the great virtues was reserved; for he is the beginning of the virtues, as he said: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.”

And laughing he was silent. He teaches why one must be silent: “I will cry out, and there is no judgment yet. He himself,” he says, “has willed that I suffer these things. Shut in as by walls of temptations, I cannot flee until it pleases God to pull down the heights of my temptations. For now if I cry out, there is no judgment yet.” I am still in the contest, I am still wrestling, a struggle still remains for me; for the crown has not yet come out; and no one is crowned unless he has competed lawfully.

A third contest was owed him. He had lost all his possessions, that is, his property with his children; his flesh suffered wounds; it remained for him to overcome the temptations of words. No small contest! Adam was deceived by speech, Samson conquered by a word; for nothing so pierces the soul as painted speech, and again nothing bites so much as harsher speech. Many who have overcome the torments applied to them have not endured harsh words. Job toiled, but he endured, and carried the burdens of words along with those of wounds. His referee saw him; from the cloud and the whirlwind he gave a hand to the struggler, pronounced that his opponents had fallen heavily, declared him the victor, and conferred the crown.

What is finer than to laugh when we are cursed? For we ought to rejoice if things foreign to us are said. First, because the enemy, wishing to say something against us by which to fasten a charge, did not find what is true but composed falsehoods instead of truths. Then, because the Lord himself said in the Gospel of such accusation falsely brought against the innocent for righteousness’ sake: “Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven.” So one who recognizes the charge ought to be silent, lest he aggravate the wound and the scar be torn open; and one who does not recognize it ought to be silent too, for he hears another’s crime, not his own. If he answers, he makes it his own; if he is silent, he turns it back and wounds the reviler. One who relies on the reward mentioned ought also to be silent; for he suffers no prejudgment who is not under judgment. And even if there is prejudgment in the world, there will not be in the judgment of God. Indeed, so that you may know that insult does not prejudge a good conscience, hear holy Job, a weightier witness than if he had held the rule of the Roman world: “Now I will be silent and give up; if now there is prejudgment against me, then I shall not hide from your face.”

These things, then, he answered more sparingly at the outset, to remind them of God’s judgment and, like a good physician, to bring them to their senses, called back from insolence and fury. But after he noticed that they persisted in insults, he answered with more and stronger things, and struck with a heavier fist those who were stoning an innocent man with the rocks of their words. “Hear,” he says, “hear my words; let it not be for me to seek consolation from you. Bear with me, for I will speak stronger things; the weight of my words will be heavy.” I too will speak according to your opinion: that many in this world abound in the successes of prosperity and others are weighed down and placed in hardship, and this seems to be dealt out according to the deserts of sins. Even if I say so, do not laugh as though I had come round to you. Even if I am a sinner, I am not answerable to a man, because he who judges and claims power over me is himself under sin. Or if I am judged as a man, that is common to all. I ought not to be rebuked: it is the weakness of our condition, not a special wickedness.

“But tell me: if I suffer this because of my sin, as you object, why do the wicked live, and not only live but are filled with riches and multiply their fruits, and also enjoy their children, and their houses abound?” These things are evidently good in appearance, but by a deeper mystery you will find that what are thought goods are not goods, and what are thought evils are judged better than they.

“They have grown old,” he says, “in riches.” He said πεπαλαίωνται (“they have grown old”), so that what seems to be meant is not so much the lasting possession of riches as the aged vexation of plenty, as Ecclesiastes saw riches kept to the harm of their owner, which perish amid the greatest distraction and anxiety. For what is left behind here perishes and cannot benefit the dead. So the dead man had anxiety from them and could not find rest, he who left behind something to blush at and took nothing with him to hold; far unlike him of whom it is written: “Blessed is the man who has filled his desire from these; he will not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” He whose inheritance is the Lord and whose reward is from the childbirth of the Virgin Mary is proclaimed at his departure with the praises of wisdom, since he had nothing to blush at who desired none of the things of the world, but, having laid aside the spoils of the old man, wounded the adversary with the weapon of self-restraint, so that the adversary, lamed by his wound and confounded by admiration of his virtues, could not cry out against him at the end of this life. You have it, then, that the man who has grown old in the desire of money is not praiseworthy, but the one renewed in the reception of grace.

Let us look at another point: “Their seed,” he says, “is according to the soul,” that is, they are not counted among the just. For the just sow in the Spirit and from the Spirit will reap eternal life; but those who sow according to the soul cannot reap spiritual things, because the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are folly to him, and he cannot know the things of the Spirit, and therefore he is not filled with spiritual things but is judged.

“Their children are in sight,” that is, what they do they do in order to be seen by men, not because, being good, they take thought to choose what will be approved at the coming judgment. Scripture often means works by children, since our posterity is richer in good deeds than in children. Hence Hezekiah too, freed from a grave illness, said: “From this day I will make children, who will proclaim your righteousness, O Lord of my salvation, and I will not cease blessing you with the psaltery all the days of my life”; for good is the posterity of devotion and faith, which did not know how to yield to captivity, which Hezekiah’s sons endured.

And he added, saying that “there is no fear for them, there is no scourge from the Lord.” But the just man says: “For I have been scourged all day long,” and he wishes to be scourged so that he may be received by the Lord, and he wishes to fear God, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Nor does he think it blessedness if his heifer does not miscarry, as fools think. For what is signified by the ox but the labor of rural cultivation, which always comes round in a circle and never ceases, but when it seems completed is called back to its beginning? These are they who cultivate Sodom and Gomorrah. So those who cultivate Egypt and turn over the clods of earth with a kind of plough of a solid mind bring forth labor for themselves and reap sorrows. Therefore their heifer does not miscarry but gives birth, so that their labor may be increased, and all they have conceived they bring forth without the fear of God. But the just glory far otherwise; for they glory not in abundance of riches nor in the birth of cattle but in the Lord, saying: “From your fear we have conceived in the womb and brought forth the spirit of salvation.” Of the just, then, it is said that they have brought forth the spirit of salvation, which they received from the fear of God, not from the malice of this world, of which we read: “Behold, he has travailed with injustice, conceived labor, and brought forth iniquity.” Better, then, is the miscarriage than the birth of worldly men. Indeed of the man who came into this world and endured the vanity and darkness of this world through a long life, Ecclesiastes declared that a miscarriage is better than he. For it has more rest than he, because it has not experienced the vicissitudes of the world, in which, even if one lives a thousand years, he cannot see what is good. To have escaped these things, then, is more a matter of grace than to have undergone them.

But perhaps what he added may trouble you: that “they remain like everlasting sheep, and their children play, taking up psaltery and harp, and delight in the sound of the psalm. They have ended their life in good things, and slept in the rest of the underworld.” Distinguish these things, and since you are spiritual, judge. The wicked are like the everlasting, not everlasting, because they cannot receive eternity from one who is not eternal. He cannot give what he does not have, nor can he enlighten who does not possess light; but he transforms himself into an angel of light so as to deceive unbelievers. He transforms himself by the pretense of false light, not by the splendor of everlasting brightness. Hence the Savior too says: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” He is not lightning, but like lightning. Consider some heretic intent on bodily abstinence and the knowledge of heavenly mysteries: he is thought to be like one everlasting, but he does not have the wages of eternal life, because one who does not have the truth of faith has a false imitation. His little ones play, like her who, when she has grown wanton, wishes to marry. She has grown wanton in psaltery and harp, that is, in the sound of the voice, not in the depth of the mysteries, so that it resounded on the lips but did not reach the heart.

Such men, then, have ended their life in the goods of the world, this life, that is, which they were living, not the one whose reward they hoped for; and therefore they slept in the rest of the underworld, not in heavenly rest. But let us pray rather to undergo labor here, so that in the kingdom of heaven we may be found worthy to obtain the consolation of eternal rest. For abundance of prosperity is a great enticement to sin: it lifts one up into pride and pours in forgetfulness of the Creator. Consider that rich man in the Gospel reclining on scarlet and purple, from whose table the just poor man Lazarus gathered crumbs: does not that rich man seem to you to say to God: “Depart from me; I do not wish to know your ways”? And truly such men do not wish to know the ways of the Lord; for if they wished, they would know them; but because they are full of labor, they are shunned and avoided by the lost. So like a drunkard he does not recognize the author of salvation. Then, turning to his drinking companions, he says: “Let us eat and drink. What does it profit if we serve him? Or what use is it if we keep his commands?” So speaks one drunk with the abundance of worldly things, because the deserts of crimes are not repaid at once in this world; for he was lolling at ease because everything was at hand for his pleasure, and, conscious of his impiety, whose punishment was put off, he thought that God did not see the crimes of the wicked.

To this opinion of his, then, holy Job replied: Do not be secure and careless, thinking that the Lord’s scourges do not come to you in this very world. “The lamp of the wicked too is put out.” It shines for a time; it does not have eternal light. And though the world favors them, because they do the will of him who holds rule in the world, a reversal of fortune usually comes, and sorrows from heavenly wrath and indignation, so that they are winnowed like chaff by the wind. The unjust are winnowed like chaff, the just like wheat. Indeed, hear the Lord saying to Peter: “Behold, Satan has demanded to winnow you like wheat; but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” Those fail who are winnowed like chaff; he does not fail who is like that grain which fell and rose again, heaped with the increase of many fruits. Therefore the prophet says: “Woe is me, for I have become like one who gathers stubble in the harvest!” So impiety is compared to stubble, which is quickly burned up, and to dust. Therefore, after he said: “They will be like chaff before the wind,” he added a little verse at once, saying: “or like dust which the wind has carried away.” Indeed, so that you may know that the wicked man quickly crumbles and vanishes like dust, you have it said in the first psalm: “Not so the wicked, not so”; that is, not like the just, but “like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth.”

And he makes a distinction between the just and the wicked. “The one,” he says, “dies in the power of his simplicity, wholly in abundance and favor; his inward parts are full of fat, their marrow overflows. But the other finishes the course of this life in bitterness of soul and comes to his end having feasted on nothing good.” What worthy recompense can be given him for his deserts? He is brought into the tombs and keeps watch in his own grave. Not even this is a small punishment: not to have the rest of death, to be carried not to the land of the living but to the tombs of the dead. For he who lives is not sought among the dead but enjoys eternal life in Abraham’s bosom. And therefore those two men in shining garments said to the women: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Then he lists the crimes of the wicked: that they have crossed boundaries and seized the flock with the shepherd, led away the orphan’s beast of burden, taken the widow’s ox in pledge, reaped a field not their own; that the weak have worked in their vineyards without wages or food; that they have stripped off the clothing of many and made them sleep naked, taking away the covering of their life. They were drenched by the rains of the mountains, and because they lacked shelter they covered themselves with the rock. Orphans were snatched from their mothers’ breasts; those who had fallen and ought rather to have been lifted up were crushed. The hungry were cheated of food; the soul of little children groaned grievously.

Could he be ignorant of these things whom nothing escapes? “Hell is naked in his sight,” and there is no covering for the most wicked, because they cannot lie hidden. “He stretches out the north over nothing, he hangs the earth upon nothing, binding up the water in his clouds, and the cloud is not torn beneath him. The pillars of heaven have leapt apart and trembled at his rebuke. By his power he has calmed the sea, and by his discipline he has laid low the whale of the sea. The bars of heaven dread him; by his command he has slain the transgressing dragon. The power of his thunder, who understands it?” In such great crimes, then, what hope has the wicked man? Will he be saved if he trusts in the Lord? “I will tell you,” he says, “what is in the hand of the Lord, and cease adding empty things to empty things.”

And he describes how pitiable is the portion of the wicked: that even if they have many children, they are without posterity, since they lack the succession of good merits; for that is true posterity which is not on earth but in heaven. For such men, then, the inheritance is want and death the succession. When they have heaped up riches they will beg, because when they are dead they will be in need, since they cannot find rest. No one will pity their widows, but they will remain deserted and bereft of all the comfort of a husband. Even if money is gathered like earth and gold prepared like clay, their substance will be empty like a spider’s web, and the whole patrimony of their name will be consumed as by moths. The rich man sleeping will add nothing; he has opened his eyes, and he is no more. He remains in pains. So all the things in this world are nothing. Gold is in the mines, silver is in the mines: it is dug out of the mine and returns to the mine. For what else is the mind of the miser but a mine? It holds whatever it has received as if buried, and hides it in the veins and hiding places of the earth, because it does not know how to use it. Gold is brought out of the mines every day: who has ever been able to bring anything out of a miser?

Since, then, the empty hunger for gold profits nothing, because whatever it has gathered slips away, pitiable indeed are those who have deserted the just way and forgotten it, the way to which precious stones are by no means to be compared: hard to search out, impassable to the proud, closed to the boastful, level for the humble, open to the wise. And therefore we ought to seek wisdom, so that we may walk on the just way, by which that adversary, like a lion ravening and roaring, who runs through this world, could not pass. But let one who wishes to search out wisdom not seek it in the abyss, as the philosophers do, who think that they themselves by their own talent can know its depths; let him not seek it in the sea (for where there is tempest, where there is a storm of wind, wisdom cannot be); but let him seek it where there is tranquillity of mind and peace, which is above all understanding.

The remonstrance of holy Job has been gone through; now let us take up that remonstrance which we have found in the psalms. David himself, indeed, in many places did not keep silent about the vanity of the world, and often asserted that the things thought good in this world are empty, and especially in the thirty-eighth psalm, in which he says: “Yet all things are vanity, every man living. Although man walks in the image of God, yet he is disquieted in vain; he lays up treasure and does not know for whom he gathers it”; and elsewhere: “How long shall sinners, O Lord, how long shall sinners boast?” For they have a shadowy glory here; when they have left the world, they cannot find the fruit of consolation. Yet the same David inserted Psalm 72, in which, under the name of Asaph, he declares that at first he came near to falling, so that he was gripped by no small pain, when he saw sinners abounding in riches in this world and overflowing with prosperity, while he, who had justified his heart, was in afflictions and hardships; and that he incurred no small offence at the beginning, but afterwards, corrected by the Lord’s scourges and enlightened by the grace of divine knowledge, learned the course of the true teaching.

Nowhere, however, do I find that holy Asaph was troubled by any adversities, whereas holy David endured very many grievous things full of dangers; for he speaks of his own labors, and so the psalm is inscribed, as the title teaches, not as “of holy Asaph” but as “to holy Asaph.” This is shown more plainly from the Greek psalter, so that David seems to have given this Asaph too, as well as others, the psalm he himself had written, to be sung. But because it is written in that very title that the psalms of David had ended (yet how did they end, when, after these ten psalms have been gone through, the inscription of the titles afterwards includes psalms of David up to the very end?), let us therefore set aside a definition of this kind and consider the course of the psalm, and make our beginning from the first verse of the prophet’s remonstrance.