Fragments on Job

A man can become righteous, he says, by comparison with other human beings; but before the Lord of all, how will a mortal be righteous? For when God judges he does not act as a tyrant, but persuades the one being judged and makes him willing to accept his sentence. We who are judged, then, shall see the Lord pleading our case with us before the Father and saying: “O man, what profit is there in my blood, in my going down to corruption? Come, what have you done worthy of this, or of the rest?”

Mountains: Moses and the prophets. “I lifted up my eyes to the mountains.” Christ makes the first covenant old, and the Jews do not know it, to whom it was said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me.” He also overturned the mountains of Jerusalem that reach only as far as the letter, and the sanctuary. He also darkens the sun and the stars with his own brightness.

“He who numbers the multitude of the stars.” It is reported that during the three hours in which the sun failed, stars appeared as at night.

For the things I have spoken of before, he says, are not yet great, not yet unsearchable, since they are visible.

He did not say “his fear,” but “the fear that comes from him.” “His fear,” then, is our own work, coming from what is in our power; but the fear that comes from him is grace and his gift, filling up what is lacking in us. The same holds for “Increase our faith.” For what we lack, he says, is what comes from your gift, not what is in our power.

For let no one think, he says, that God goes on postponing to the end the punishments of the unjust, even if he is patient for a time; but like those who lie in ambush, so he comes upon them unexpectedly; and there is no one among the ungodly who can escape divine justice.

He defends God on the question why he allowed the tempters to tempt us; and he says that a human being could not be righteous if he had no opponent.

Methodius of Side takes it of Christ, and says: Hear him saying, “But I am a worm and not a man.” He calls himself a worm, then, not because of wickedness but because of humility; or else, he says, because the worm is not born of a pairing but from matter lying at hand.

Job, convinced that he suffers by God's judgment, and saying, “As the Lord lives, who has so judged me,” confesses that the wisdom concerning God's judgments is beyond grasp, not only for him but for every human being, and that the earthly place, defiled with sins, is not able to receive the knowledge of God's counsel. He says this, then, as if to his friends, who think they have grasped the reason why he was suffering these things.

“The divine spirit”: Methodius takes it to be the conscience, given by God to all human beings, righteous or unrighteous, which stings the soul for its sins and does not consent to what is done contrary to right reason. Of this, he says, John too speaks in his letter: “If our conscience does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.” What, then, he says, is condemned? For the conscience does not condemn itself, but the soul when it sins. Of this Solomon too said: “For your incorruptible spirit is in all things.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of the Father, went down into the abyss, and having gone down he was not held fast. The abyss, then, said, “It is not in me,” for it is in heaven. And the sea said, “It is not with me.” This sea is human life, in which the shipwrecks of virtue happen. If, then, you wish wisdom to be with you, even if you are on the sea, tread the waves: give your hand to Wisdom, and she will make you walk upon the waves.

That is, for the salvation of my head, that is, of my mind. For as the head is the most sovereign part of the body, so the most sovereign part of our soul is the mind.

When I, being righteous, he says, had the material useful to me, I made it into virtue; for I used everything well.

The Lord does not speak to human beings from the start; but when a soul has been prepared by many means, and has been helped both through other people and through its own prayer and diligence, and has been trained, and has gone up to a height as far as is possible for human nature, then the Lord speaks, and reveals his own words to those who have gone up so far. So, accordingly, he did for Job too; for he kept his word for him like a crown. Let us also inquire into the words “through whirlwind and clouds.” For God does not appear ever to have spoken to any of those before through a whirlwind. The whirlwind, then, is what makes a storm; and the greatest storm had come upon Job: the devil in full fell upon him, having asked this from God. The words of his friends were also a storm for Job. In such a storm he stood firm and endured; and as a man of understanding, having acquired skill in steering, he did not suffer shipwreck concerning the faith. For this reason the one who speaks to him, as a sign of the storm that had seized him, in which he also shone out, speaks through a whirlwind. And if Job's affairs had remained in this distress, so that he was left suffering these things and departed this life, the Lord would have spoken to him through a whirlwind only. But now, since his affairs change for him from storm to fair weather, and since he has recovered his bodily health, the one who speaks to him speaks not only through a whirlwind but also through clouds.

Since the tempter has been defeated, the president of the games takes pride in his own athlete and says, as to the one defeated: “Who is this who hides?” For to whom is it fitting that this be said? Job was not hiding, since he was pious and holy. But this one whom he rebukes wishes to hide and supposes that his plan is hidden from God. Yet he does these things as one hiding. For Adam too, when he sinned, thought he was hiding from the presence of the Lord.

As to the devil: “You are a noble fellow; gird up your loins like a man, and I will question you. You do not believe that anyone is wiser than you, but you think you are someone great?” For so the devil is called by Isaiah too: “I will bring judgment on the great mind, the ruler of the Assyrians.” He says to him, then, “Gird up your loins like a man.” But he does not gird himself. “I will question you, and you answer me.” But he cannot answer him. “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor?”

“Do you contend with me? Do you stand against me? Do you fight against my athletes? Where were you when I was making the earth? Who were you then?” You had already fallen, he says. For at the beginning of the making of the world, he says, “darkness was upon the abyss.” This darkness is not created darkness, but darkness that began to be by choice, through the loss of light.

Not “the measure” but “the measures,” to show the differences of the earth: one part bearing this, another that, and another something else.

Having come this far, this blessed father ends his commentary. “So as to find a cornerstone”: this can also be understood of the only-begotten Son of God, made flesh for us, according to what is in the Psalms: “The stone which the builders rejected,” the teachers of the Jews, “has become the head of the corner.” For having come to earth by the good pleasure of the Father, he joined together in himself the two peoples, of the Jews and of the nations, just as the cornerstone binds both walls together.

“A great voice,” that is, one that utters great things, as in the apostle's words: “See with what great letters I have written to you,” that is, letters that signify such great things.

[Again he turned the discourse to the sea: not as though the sea had a spring, but as never failing, as though it had a spring.] Many have gone down into the abyss; but they have gone down so as to be prisoners, not so as to walk about in it. Jesus alone walked in the abyss as a free man, where there are no tracks of those who walk [for he chose death, though not liable to it, to ransom those subject to death]. And he says to those in bonds, “Come out” [and to those in darkness, “Be uncovered,” with which what follows also agrees].

[Do not think that these things you have endured were decreed for you by me without reason, and do not set aside my judgment. Let us remember this saying as useful whenever God judges that we should suffer something: lose a child, lose office, fall ill in body, undergo any of these things whatever. None of these can we suffer unless God judges it so. Since, then, none of these happens without God's judgment, it is said to the sufferer: “Do not set aside my judgment,” that is, do not deny what I judged concerning you.] Do not suppose, he says, that these things you have endured were decreed for you by me without reason, but by me who foreknew what was to your benefit; for I added to the trials my answer to you for no other reason than that you might appear righteous, that is, that you might be shown to be what you were.

As an athlete, learn about the dragon, your opponent. [The beasts are the hostile powers. Of them the prophet began by saying, “Do not hand over to the beasts a soul that confesses you.” The beasts are the hostile powers. Over them, O man, you have received authority, if you serve God, to tread upon asps and basilisks.]

[These are the material and food of fire. And he lodges above all among those worthy of the fire, beneath moist, feeble, and fruitless souls, which are fuel for fire … Or he means this: that both certain great demons and those lower in wickedness live with him; or that he attacks both small and great men, slipping under all alike. For “branches” are the side-shoots; he says, then, that as under the shade of trees, so he rests among these. “And shoots of the chaste-tree”: since many, often even after practising chastity, have become of his portion, like the foolish virgins; for there are also those with him who keep chaste.]

[“So that the dragon may no longer hiss.” He says this because the demons begged him not to cast them into the abyss. Or he says it because he said to the Lord, “All these I will give you” … or: because you cannot so subdue him that he chooses no longer to make war on you.] — [The bracelet is an ornament of the hand, that is, a good work. Whoever, then, has such a bracelet will pierce the lip of the dragon, while the devil on the opposing side is put to shame, having nothing to say against him.]