On the Complaints of Job and David 3.3–4.1

“How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” The progress of amendment shines out at the beginning. For no one can truly confess that God is good except one who recognizes his goodness not from the successes of his own advantages but from the depth of heavenly mysteries and the height of the divine plan; and it must be weighed not by the appearance of present things but by the benefit of future ones. So God is always good to the just man; both when he is tormented by bodily pains and when he is afflicted by the bitterness of punishments, he always says: “If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why do we not bear evil things?” He rejoices to be crushed here, so that he may find consolation in the future, knowing that one who has received good things in this life has his reward. He cannot hope for future rewards who has not wrestled, has not been trained in the struggle of various battles. But one who is afflicted in this world, whether justly or unjustly, rejoices, either because he pays here the price of his offences or because he knows that there is richer grace with the Lord if he suffers bitter things unjustly for his name or for some good work, according to what is written: that “there is no glory if you are punished for sinning and endure it; but if you do good and suffer, this is grace with God. For to this you have been called, because Christ too died for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his footsteps, who committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was cursed, did not curse in return; when he suffered, did not threaten.” So the just man, even if he is on the rack, is always just, because he justifies God and says he endures less than his sins deserve; he is always wise; for true and perfect wisdom is not taken away by the torments of the rack; he does not lose what he is, because he casts out fear by the zeal and purpose of love. He knows how to say, as a wise man, that what we endure in this body is unworthy of the reward of the glory to come, and all the sufferings of this time cannot equal the reward that will follow. So God is always good to him, who knows at what time he will reap. And therefore, like a good farmer, he ploughs his field here with the share of a rather strict abstinence; here he roots out with the sickle of the virtues, which prunes vices; here he dungs it, humbling himself even to the earth, knowing that God raises the needy from the earth and lifts up the poor from the dunghill. Indeed, had the apostle Paul not counted things as dung, he could never have gained Christ for himself. Here he guards his fruits, so that he may store them securely there. So God is always good to him, because he always hopes for good things from God.

Take another point. “How good,” he says, “is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” Is God not good, then, to all? He is indeed good to all, because he is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful. And therefore the Lord Jesus came to save what was lost; for he came to take away the sin of the world and to heal our wounds. But because not all seek medicine, but many flee it lest the force of the ulcer be stung by the remedies, he heals the willing; he does not constrain the unwilling. Those, then, receive health who seek medicine; but those who reject the physician and do not seek him cannot feel the physician’s goodness, which they do not experience. And one who is treated is also healed, and so the physician is good to those he has healed. To those, then, God is good to whom he has forgiven sins; but how can one who has an incurable sin in the ulcer of his mind think the physician good, whom he flees? So the apostle explained beautifully, as we said before, that God is good to all, since he wills all men to be saved; and especially to the faithful is the prerogative of divine goodness kept, whom both God’s will and his grace help. But the psalmist, in saying, “How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!”, referred it to the judgment of those who do not know how to think otherwise of God than that he is good toward all things and in all things.

Indeed in what follows he himself explains what he meant, saying: “But my feet were almost moved, my steps had well-nigh slipped, because I was envious of sinners, seeing the peace of sinners.” He surely means not the feet and steps of the body, but the direction and step of the mind, of which he says elsewhere: “Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of sinners move me.” Therefore we must always ask that the Lord direct the footsteps of our souls, lest they slip and, spilled on a kind of slippery ground of error, be unable to keep their stability. The cause of the slip, however, is that he was envious of the peace of sinners. But we ought to emulate what is good, not what is full of disgrace, as the apostle Paul too expressed, saying: “It is good to be zealous for good always”; and let it not move you that he placed peace in evil.

Indeed in the Gospel too you have it that there is a peace which Christ rejected, as he himself says: “My peace I leave you, my peace I give you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” For there is a peace that has no stumbling block, and one that has. That which comes from love has no stumbling block; that which comes from pretense has. Therefore the prophet too says: “Peace, peace; and where is peace?” Let us flee the peace of sinners, then; for they conspire against the innocent, they come together to crush the just man, to destroy the widow or to assault her chastity.

And therefore “there is no reclining at their death”: not “declining,” as many Latin manuscripts have it, but “reclining.” For when we labor and are bent over some work and stoop down, we are accustomed to lean back; but sinners, that is, of grave offences, and above all the wicked, cannot lean back, of whom it was said: “And bow down their back always.” For those who have not cleaved to Christ do not raise themselves to heavenly things. And therefore those whose death is very evil do not rise with him either, as it is written: “The death of sinners is very evil.” But one who dies with Christ and is buried with him not only reclines but is also raised again. Of him that saying fits beautifully: “You have turned all his bed in his sickness,” especially if he is a martyr, whose sickness is dissolved by his suffering, his death by resurrection.

We have seen that rich man who, clothed in purple and fine linen, reclined in this world and feasted splendidly every day, from whose table poor Lazarus gathered what fell; how, placed in torments in the underworld, he could not lean back, but with difficulty lifted not his whole self but only his eyes to Abraham, asking him to send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue. So there was no reclining for his death, nor firmness in his stroke. For scourges are of no use after death.

And therefore David, while he was in the life of this body, prepared himself for scourges, so that the Lord might receive him chastened. Consider for me again holy Job, who was covered with sores and shaken in all his limbs and full of pains in his whole body, dissolving the clods of earth with the pus and fluid of his wounds: how, when he could not lean back while placed in this body, he found the rest of death. And therefore, conscious of himself, he said: “Death is rest to a man.” So he was not moved in his stroke, nor did he waver through a slip of his tongue, he who in all these things did not sin with his lips, as Scripture testifies; rather he found firmness in his stroke, by which he was strengthened in Christ. So both Job and David, because they were scourged here, had firmness in their stroke; for the Father scourges the son whom he receives. But those who are not scourged here are not received there as sons. And therefore “they are not in the labors of men, and they will not be scourged with men,” so that they may be scourged for ever with the devil.

“Therefore,” he says, “their pride held them fast; they were covered with their iniquity and impiety.” Iniquity is a bad garment; if anyone wishes to hold it on us, we ought to give it up, lest he begin to come into judgment with us. And if anyone tries to take away the spiritual tunic we have received, give up the cloak of iniquity, put on the covering of faith and patience, with which David covered himself in fasting, so as not to lose the coverings of virtue. Fasting itself is a covering. Indeed, had fasting sobriety not covered holy Joseph, the adulteress’s wantonness would have stripped him. Had Adam wished to cover himself with this fasting, he would not have been made naked. But because he tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil against the heavenly prohibition, and broke the commanded fast with the food of incontinence, he knew that he was naked. Had he fasted, he would both have kept the garments of faith and not have seen himself uncovered. Let us not clothe ourselves, then, with iniquity and impiety, lest it be said of any of us: “And he clothed himself with cursing.”

Adam too clothed himself badly, who, while he sought coverings of leaves, received the sentence of the curse. The Jews clothed themselves with cursing, of whom it is written: “Their iniquity came forth as from fat; they passed into the disposition of the heart.” For from adeps (“fat”) comes adipalis, that is, “fat.” For just as the soul fed on good things and filled with virtues is filled as with fat and richness, as it is written, so iniquity that comes forth as from fat signifies not a thin and slight iniquity but one full of vices. Indeed, they did not fall into error by some chance slip, but passed into sacrilege by counsel and design.

“They have set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue has passed over the earth.” What it is to set one’s mouth against heaven, that younger of the brothers teaches us, who returning to his father said: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” Those set their mouth against heaven who think that the authorship of their crimes is brought upon them by a kind of necessity of their birth. These are wont to spare neither heaven nor earth, so as to think that man’s life is governed by a kind of course of the stars. They leave nothing to providence, nothing to good morals. Would that these too had returned like that one of the two young men: the good Lord would not have denied the remedy. And yet, even if they themselves do not wish to be healed, the Lord reserves the grace of return, so that those in Israel who were driven out by the blindness of their own heart may return through the fullness of the church, and may not spend empty days of this life but have them full of good working and faith, when the Lord has filled them with spiritual grace. Hear how they return: “Because blindness has happened in part to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved.” But because the mystery had to be fulfilled, that God should shut up all things in unbelief, that is, refute and convict them (for when two contend, if one prevails, it is said: he has shut up the other), and therefore through his mercy, so that the world might become subject to God, the people did indeed return in its heirs, but was led astray by the error of a late crime, so as not to believe that God foreknows hidden things. But the Lord has reserved for them the grace of future salvation, so that they may at some time be redeemed, saying: “Therefore my people will return here.” What is “here”? That is, to me, to my equity and justice, to my worship.

“And it will fill up the days of its life.” This you will surely take to mean that the people is indeed redeemed, that is, the one that has believed. In it, even if those who have not believed are not redeemed, yet the prerogative of redemption is bestowed on the people of God.

These, then, placed in error, said: “How did God know? And is there all knowledge in the Most High?” For they think there is no knowledge in God, because sinners abound in worldly prosperity. And he brings them in speaking further: “Behold, these sinners, abounding in the world, have obtained riches.” You have this expressed more plainly in the Gospel, where Simon the Pharisee, seeing that the sinful woman came into his house and poured ointment on Christ’s feet, said within himself: “This man, if he were a prophet, would surely know what sort of woman this is who touches him, that she is a sinner.” But God’s patience does not prejudge the truth, and his foreknowledge and providence are proved all the more by the fact that one living in sin abounds in the success of worldly prosperity. The stronger man sees this and laughs; the incautious is led astray and moved.

Indeed the psalmist says that he said: “Then in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent”; that is: I see them abounding, I see everything prospering for them, while I am crushed and harassed by many temptations. So in vain have I given myself to innocence and applied myself to the pursuit of a sober way of life. And beautifully he says: “I washed my hands among the innocent,” so that he might seem not to claim for himself the height of innocence but to offer diligent effort. Meanwhile he testifies that such a speech did not go out from him unpunished.

For he recalls that he was scourged all day long because he had said that he had justified his heart to the Lord in vain; but after the scourges there followed at once the correction of the wrong opinion. “For at once,” he says, “my reproof was in the mornings,” that is, in the open and clear; for the light of truth, laying hold of him, did not allow him to hold what he had said. “So the light of truth poured into my mind refuted and convicted me, because I did not speak rightly: In vain have I justified my heart. For I spoke those words as one placed in darkness; and as I recalled them my heart was pierced, and when my heart was pierced my affection was enlightened, so that there came to be in my heart a flaming fire, which made in me the spiritual beginning of the day. Enlightened, then, as the day dawned for me, and placed as it were in many mornings, I understood that I had been made outside the order of the generation of the children of God, since, though at first I had believed that the maker of the world, providing for the human race, had made all things, whether sad or little pleasing, for our benefit, afterwards, troubled by wrong opinions, I lost so good a judgment.”

So I conferred with my heart and said to myself: “If I say thus, that in vain have I justified my heart,” the voice of God met me, saying: “Behold, to the generation of your children, which I have arranged”; that is: behold, you find in the Scriptures that I have arranged, O Adam, for the generation of your children, that riches come to the wicked by chance, not through any merit. Nor are the gains of treasure the rewards of virtue, so that, on the contrary, poverty is not the punishment of sin; but these things come without distinction, rolled along like a river in a kind of flood of the world.

“And I thought,” and I seemed to myself to recognize, that this was true, that this agreed and accorded with divine providence, and that I had been troubled in vain over things on which I ought not to have dwelt.

And so, because I seemed to myself to have grasped the true judgment and attained knowledge of the matter itself, I said to myself: “This is a labor before me, until I enter into the sanctuary of God and understand the last things”; that is: only this labor remains for me, to enter into the sanctuary of God, where the cherubim are, that is, the depth of knowledge, and not to labor among uncertainties and opinions; for the narrative of a fool is like a burden on the way. Therefore let us enter the inner shrine of sacred knowledge and the inmost recesses of truth, so that there may be no labor in us; for wisdom leads us away from the sense of labor. Indeed, “there is no labor in Jacob”; the cause of labor is ignorance, since one who does not know that rewards are stored up for the just is not refreshed from his labors but rather is bent and broken by the labor of his imprudence. Let us enter, then, the sanctuary of God, where the cherubim are, in whom is the remembrance of sacred knowledge and of that true and eternal light.

In that lampstand the image shines by which we may understand the last things. For the saint knows at the last and attains perfect wisdom with the advance of age, saying: “Make known to me, O Lord, my end and the number of my days, what it is, that I may know what is lacking to me.” What is the end but that when the kingdom is handed over to God the Father, when the hidden things of wisdom are revealed? This end of our contest the prophet sought, desiring to know what was lacking to his perfection; for the end of our training and studies is perfection.

This, then, is the first account of true knowledge: that the things of the world happen by chance. The second is this: that “because of their evasions you have set for them” flowing successes of worldly advantages and an abundance of riches, so that they might not plead that through poverty and the bitterness of some sorrow and mourning they were less devout, and were driven by the necessity of want into the guilt of robbery and the pursuit of plunder. For they were not enriched with wealth or raised up with honors for tranquillity of life and the enjoyment of gladness, but so that, their complaint being excluded, their hardship might be heaped up.

Such men, then, are cast down while they are lifted up. For it is not grace but ruin where neither is the use of the gift kept for long and the excuse for sinning is taken away. For what complaint is weightier than that divine one which you have in the book of the prophet Micah: “My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I grieved you, or how have I troubled you? Answer me. Did I not bring you out of the land of Egypt and free you from the house of slavery?” See how the wicked are cast down while they are lifted up: their complaint is excluded, their punishment heaped up. For, invited by heavenly benefits, they ought not to have deserted the giver of security and prosperity in life, whom they ought rather to have obeyed. But as the justice of God is great, so also is his punishment severe. For when does the wicked man usually last? Of him you have it written elsewhere too: “I saw the wicked man exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon, and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found.” Incredible is the swiftness of his extinction. You see a wicked man suddenly powerful in this world: while you pass by, he is no more. How great is a shadow on the earth, and how short-lived! Move your footstep, and the shadow has passed. Or if something here troubles you, lift the footstep of your mind to the things to come, and you will find that the wicked man whom you believed to exist here will not exist there; for he who is nothing does not exist. Indeed the Lord knows those who are his; but those who are not, he does not acknowledge, because they did not acknowledge him who is.

Of these, then, he says here too: “They have failed and perished because of their iniquity, like the dream of one who wakes”; that is: so the wicked fail and vanish like the dream of one first waking from sleep, because they are in darkness and have walked in darkness, and no trace of any good work of theirs remains, but they are like those who see a dream. And one who dreams dreams in the night, and night is in darkness. The children of darkness are deprived of the Sun of righteousness and the splendor of virtue, always sleeping and not watching, of whom it is well said: “They have slept their sleep and found nothing.” For when their souls are separated from the body, as if released from the sleep of the body, they will find nothing, hold nothing, and lose what they thought they held, since the foolish and senseless man, though he has overflowed with riches, will leave his riches to strangers, nor will the glory of his house go down with him to the underworld.

What follows also shows how his image is not found but perishes, since his image is not found in the city of the Lord, that heavenly Jerusalem. For the Lord painted us in his image and likeness, as he himself teaches, saying: “Behold, I have painted your walls, Jerusalem.” If we act well, this heavenly image remains in us; if anyone acts badly, this image is erased in him (the image, that is, of him who came down from heaven), and the image of the earthly is in him. Hence the apostle too says: “As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly.” So the images of the good endure and shine in that city of God. But if anyone has turned aside to graver sins and has not done penance, his image is abolished or cast out, as Adam was cast out and shut out of paradise. But whoever has conducted himself devoutly and honorably enters into the city of God and brings in his image, so that it may shine in that city of God. “Lord, in your city you will bring their images to nothing,” because those cannot shine in the light who have clothed themselves with works of darkness. Let us take an example from the world. See how in cities the images of good rulers endure, while the images of tyrants are destroyed.

Considering these things, then, and setting his mind on them, the holy prophet, who had been troubled before, was delighted. Hence he himself says: “For my heart was delighted and my reins were relaxed; and I was brought to nothing and did not know; and I became like a beast before you; and I am always with you.” When I recognized, he says, that God cares for and regards human affairs, my reins rested; that is: from the very great weariness of my old imprudence I rested through the knowledge of the heavenly good and grace. There are also certain reins of the soul, which are troubled in us by the labor of ignorance; these are relaxed into rest by the knowledge of heavenly doctrine and, supported as by a kind of prop of the heavenly precepts, are refreshed. Then, he says, I understood that I was wearying myself in vain, since I did not know what is true. “And I became like a beast.”

Beautifully he added “before you”; for in comparison with heavenly beings, what is man but an irrational beast? For the stars too, though bright, vanish at the rising of the sun. And Moses says: “I have not been fit since yesterday, since you began to speak with your servant”; and, he says, “I am weak of voice and slow of speech.” So, then, man too, I will not say in comparison with Christ, but in comparison with the angels, seems to be a dumb beast. But let no one despair, because “men and beasts the Lord will save.” And therefore, because I have learned not from myself but from you, I will cleave to you always, so that I may cease to be a beast, and you may say to me: “But you, stand here with me.” For man, surrounded by the grace of God, begins to be a man, who through imprudence displayed insensibility and the ignorance of a beast; for man is proved by this, if he is capable of reason and grace. And so he rejoices that he has been separated from the dumb animals and admitted to the company of men, whom God visits and protects. For what is man but that the Lord is mindful of him, or that he is visited by the Lord?

Hence, as one visited by him, he says: “You have held my right hand, and in your will you have led me, and with glory you have taken me up.” So we have received it, and so it agrees with the Greek. For the Greek said: ἐκράτησας τῆς χειρός, that is, “you have held the hand,” τῆς δεξιᾶς μου, “my right.” He is well directed whose right hand God holds with his own hand. He can say: “The Lord is at my right hand, that I may not be moved.” Had Adam been willing to have the Lord at his right hand, he would not have been deceived by the serpent. But because he forgot God’s command and fulfilled the serpent’s will, the devil held his hand and made it stretch out to the tree of the knowledge of evil and good, so that he might pluck what was forbidden. In him a prejudgment was made against all, and the adversary began to stand at the right hand of all. Hence came forth too that form of curse against Judas: “And let the devil stand at his right hand.” If that curse is grievous, this blessing is the greatest, by which the bonds of the hard curse are loosed. Therefore the Lord Jesus set the devil at his right hand, as we read in the book of Zechariah; for he had taken up the cause and place of man. He stood there, then, where Adam’s inheritance stood. Like a good athlete he allowed him to stand at his right hand, so as to drive him back, saying: “Get behind, Satan.” And so the adversary, thrown from his place, withdrew; but to you, lest the devil stand at your right hand, he says: “Come, follow me.” Foreseeing, then, the coming of the Lord, who came down from heaven to free us from the power of the adversary, David says: “The Lord is at my right hand, that I may not be moved.” But one at whose right hand the devil was, was moved. Rightly, then, he says here too: “You have held my right hand,” that is: so that I can no longer sin, so that I, who before was tossing with slippery step, may stand on a faithful footing. How well the apostle said this, when the Lord saw him troubled and, stretching out his right hand, did not let him falter but made him firm with fearless step! Freed, what else did Peter say but these prophetic verses: “You have held my right hand, and in your will you have led me, and with glory you have taken me up”? What is the right hand but the active power of the soul? If it is directed by the Lord’s will, it desires nothing else, seeks nothing, asks for no riches of this world, no aids.

Therefore the saint says: “For what remains for me in heaven? And what have I wished from you on earth?” That is: you are my portion; you suffice me for all things; I have sought nothing else but to have you as my share; I have subjected myself to no heavenly creature, as the Gentiles do; I have coveted no riches of this world and no enticements of pleasures. I need nothing, I who have been taken up by you, nor is there anything left in the heavens that I should seek further. Having nothing, I have all things, because I have Christ, whom the Most High Father did not spare, but delivered him up for us all; how then has he not given us all things with him? as the apostle said; for all things are in Christ, through whom are all things and in whom all things hold together. Having all things in him, then, I seek no other reward, because he himself is the reward of all. And therefore he said to the perfect man: “Take up your cross and follow me.” One who follows him is not led to perfection by a reward, but is brought by perfection to the reward. For the imitators of Christ are so not for hope of good but for love of virtue; for Christ is good by nature, not from desire of reward. He suffered because it delighted him to do good, not because he sought an increase of glory from his passion. Therefore one who desires to imitate him works for what profits others, not himself. Hence not without reason he fails for himself, but grows strong for others by the increase of virtue.

And fittingly he says: “My heart and my flesh have failed, O God of my heart.” For everlasting things cannot succeed unless earthly things have failed. The flesh fails, then, when carnal things are put to death; they fail too who carry about the dying of Jesus Christ in their flesh; for the death of Christ works in them, so that every enticement of errors may die. From this it is gathered that the heart of man too fails when the evil thoughts that come from the heart are put to death, so that forgetfulness may hide all earthly things and God may become the God of the heart of those who, blessed in the pure of heart, are found worthy to see God, so that they draw near to you and do not separate themselves. For God draws near; he does not repel those who draw near; for he wishes to be the cause of salvation to all, not of death. Indeed he repels no one except one who thinks he should separate himself from his sight. “For behold,” he says, “those who go far from you will perish.”

For each one by his works either joins himself to your love or separates himself from it; for one who does things in the knowledge of which he fears to be caught flees God, like the man who, covered by walls and surrounded by darkness, thinks he is not seen by the Lord God; but he is seen, when it is said: “You have destroyed all who commit fornication away from you.” For just as a woman who commits fornication does not cleave to her husband and is not one flesh or one spirit with her husband, but divides and separates herself by fornicating, so every soul that does not cleave to God, but, serving the empty worship of idols, commits fornication, divides itself by the perversity of sacrilege and becomes far from the Lord, though it ought to be near; and one who is separated from the Lord perishes.

Hence the saint, who dreads the judgment of God, wishes always to cleave to Christ and to put his hope in him, so that he may praise the Lord, to whom be honor, glory, everlastingness from the ages, and now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.

Many indeed have lamented the weakness of human frailty, but holy Job and holy David more excellently than the rest: the former direct, vehement, keen, and, as if exasperated by grievous pains, on a higher buskin; the latter gentle, calm, and mild, with a softer feeling, so that he truly imitated the disposition of the deer, which he had set before himself to imitate. And do not be troubled if I seem to praise so great a prophet by the likeness of a wild animal, since you have read what was said to the apostles: “Be wise as serpents and simple as doves.”