On the Complaints of Job and David

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.29 · 1.30–3.2 · 3.3–4.1 · 4.2–4.26 · 4.27–4.36

1. 1.1Scripture shows that life’s troubles are outweighed by consolations and by the glory to come.
2. 1.2No earthly life equals heavenly glory; Paul, Elijah, and Peter counted their sufferings as nothing beside it.
3. 1.3In Psalm 42 David, like Job before him, remonstrates with God over human frailty; both pleas will be examined.
4. 1.4Job, bereaved and diseased, bore the Lord’s arrows like an athlete and asked not to be destroyed in the end.
5. 1.5Job laments that human life is a hireling’s trial, full of pain day and night.
6. 1.6Man is like a fugitive hireling who imagines he can hide his sins in darkness, unlike the prodigal who confessed.
7. 1.7Sin is a fool’s tale and a burden on the road, from which Christ offers rest.
8. 1.8Even the bed brings no rest to a troubled conscience, and worldly riches vanish like a dream.
9. 1.9The rich man who wakes to heavenly things finds his wealth was an empty dream that never satisfied.
10. 1.10Job’s friends tried to rob him of his innocence by describing the punishment of the wicked; he agreed about God’s power.
11. 1.11Job proclaims God’s overwhelming power, in which Ambrose finds the mysteries of redemption.
12. 1.12The aging mountains are the Old Testament, made old by Christ’s new covenant; the Jews, not knowing this, crucified the Lord.
13. 1.13Those who crucified Christ without repenting are not excused; the old pillars were shaken and the apostles made new pillars.
14. 1.14The darkness at the crucifixion is explained by the sun’s shortening the days so that Christ might rise sooner and still fulfill three days and nights.
15. 1.15Christ walking on the sea and the ships of Tarshish show that the flesh is the soul’s ship, shattered unto judgment or to good contrition.
16. 1.16Job laments that the mighty, the wicked, and the just all suffer, and that life passes like a ship’s wake; he longs for a mediator.
17. 1.17Job appeals to God as witness that, though a sinner like all, he has not acted impiously.
18. 1.18Job pleads that God himself formed him; David too marvels at God’s care for man.
19. 1.19Job’s words teach that sinners should confess, the wicked lament, and the just avoid pride.
20. 1.20The just man accuses himself and confesses at once; the unjust hides his sin in many words.
21. 1.21Job and David ask pardon for the sins of youth, the age most prone to vice.
22. 1.22Man’s life is short and stained by sin from the cradle, yet he must give account before God.
23. 1.23Trees revive and the sea has its seasons, but man’s flesh is a ceaseless storm.
24. 1.24The dead will not rise until the heavens are no longer “sewn,” that is, until they are renewed in the new creation.
25. 1.25The Spirit revealed to Job that the dead would rise only when Christ came to make all things new.
26. 1.26Job, foreseeing Christ’s descent to the dead, asks to be hidden until God’s wrath passes and to be called back to life.
27. 1.27Job foresees his resurrection at Christ’s passion and prays that the earth not cover his blood, so his prayer may rise to God.
28. 1.28Job laments his life yet never questions God’s unsearchable judgments.
29. 1.29Wisdom’s ways are beyond human search; even Paul and David could not grasp it; we must believe rather than pry.
30. 1.30Wisdom is not in the abyss or the sea, for Christ rose and trod the waves; we find it by walking over the world’s waves with faith.
31. 1.31Only God knows wisdom; the Son, who alone knows the Father, revealed it, and for man wisdom is to fear God and shun evil.
32. 2.1Book 2 takes up why the wicked prosper and the just suffer, a question with which Job and David both wrestled.
33. 2.2Job’s three friends insisted that his suffering proved his sin, not seeing that God was training Christ’s athlete.
34. 2.3Sitting on the dunghill, Job spoke more strongly than his healthy friends, for God’s power is made perfect in weakness.
35. 2.4Job gently rebukes his friends, refusing to answer their insults and leaving judgment to the Lord.
36. 2.5Like Job and David, we should meet insults with silence rather than self-defence.
37. 2.6Paul went beyond Job’s laughter to blessing, taught by Christ, who prayed for his persecutors.
38. 2.7Job keeps silence because he is still in the contest and the judgment has not yet come.
39. 2.8After losing goods and health, Job overcame the third trial of hurtful words, and God crowned him victor.
40. 2.9We should laugh at false accusations and keep silence, for God’s judgment, not men’s, decides.
41. 2.10When his friends persisted, Job answered more strongly: if he sinned, it was the common weakness, not special wickedness, and men have no right to judge him.
42. 2.11Job asks why the wicked prosper, but what seem goods are not truly good.
43. 2.12The wicked have “grown old” in riches, which bring anxiety and shame at death; the blessed man’s inheritance is the Lord.
44. 2.13The seed of the wicked is “according to the soul,” not the Spirit, so they cannot reap spiritual things.
45. 2.14The “children” of the wicked are deeds done for show; true posterity is good works, as Hezekiah said.
46. 2.15The wicked have no scourge and fruitful cattle, but the just seek God’s discipline and bring forth the spirit of salvation; a stillbirth is better than a worldly life.
47. 2.16The wicked only seem everlasting; like Satan disguised as an angel of light, or an ascetic heretic, they imitate truth without having it.
48. 2.17Prosperity breeds pride and forgetfulness of God, as with the rich man in the Gospel, who thinks God does not see.
49. 2.18The lamp of the wicked goes out; they are winnowed like chaff and blown away like dust, while the just are wheat.
50. 2.19The wicked man is laid in the tomb without rest, while the one who truly lives is not sought among the dead.
51. 2.20Job lists the oppressions of the wicked against orphans, widows, and the poor.
52. 2.21God, who sees all and rules creation with power, cannot be ignorant of the crimes of the wicked.
53. 2.22The wicked have no true posterity; their hoarded wealth is empty as a cobweb, and the miser’s mind is a mine from which nothing comes out.
54. 2.23The way of wisdom, beyond all jewels, is open to the humble; it is found not in philosophy’s abyss or the world’s sea but in peace of mind.
55. 3.1Book 3 turns to David’s remonstrance in Psalm 73, where the psalmist nearly fell on seeing sinners prosper.
56. 3.2The psalm is David’s, given to Asaph to sing; the puzzle of the title is set aside to study the psalm itself.
57. 3.3God is good to the upright in heart, who see his goodness in eternal rewards even amid suffering, as Job, Peter, and Paul taught.
58. 3.4God is good to all, but only those who accept the Physician experience his healing goodness.
59. 3.5The psalmist nearly slipped by envying the peace of sinners; we should emulate only what is good.
60. 3.6There is a false peace of sinners, which conspires against the innocent, unlike the peace Christ gives.
61. 3.7The wicked find no “reclining” or rest in death, but those who die with Christ, especially martyrs, rise with him.
62. 3.8The rich man in torment could find no rest, for chastisement is of no use after death.
63. 3.9Job and David, chastened in this life, found firmness in their suffering; those not chastened here will be punished for ever.
64. 3.10Pride and iniquity are an evil garment; fasting clothed David and Joseph, while Adam, breaking the fast, became naked.
65. 3.11Adam and those who rejected Christ clothed themselves with cursing; their iniquity came “as from fat,” deliberate and full.
66. 3.12Astrologers who blame the stars set their mouths against heaven; yet God reserves for Israel a return through the fullness of the church.
67. 3.13The people of God will be redeemed, namely those who believe.
68. 3.14The wicked deny God’s knowledge because sinners prosper; but his patience does not prejudge the truth.
69. 3.15The psalmist confesses he thought his innocence in vain when he saw the wicked prosper.
70. 3.16After God’s chastening, the light of truth showed the psalmist his error in doubting God’s providence.
71. 3.17God reminds the psalmist that riches and poverty come by chance, not as rewards or punishments.
72. 3.18The psalmist recognizes that this accords with providence.
73. 3.19Only in God’s sanctuary, the depth of knowledge, does the labor of perplexity cease.
74. 3.20The saint learns at the last, in the end when the kingdom is handed to the Father, what is lacking to his perfection.
75. 3.21God gives the wicked prosperity to take away their excuse, so that their punishment is the greater.
76. 3.22Prosperity removes the excuse of the wicked and makes their fall swifter; they vanish like a shadow.
77. 3.23The wicked vanish like a dream on waking; at death they find nothing of what they thought they had.
78. 3.24The image of God shines in the heavenly city in the good, but in the wicked it is erased, like a tyrant’s statue.
79. 3.25Understanding God’s providence, the psalmist’s heart rejoiced and his troubled “reins” found rest.
80. 3.26Compared with heavenly beings man is a beast, but God saves man and beast, and grace makes him truly human.
81. 3.27God holding the right hand reverses the devil’s place at Adam’s right; Christ drove him back, and Peter was held up on the waters.
82. 3.28God is the psalmist’s whole portion; having Christ he has all, and imitates him out of love of virtue, not for reward.
83. 3.29Heart and flesh must fail to earthly things so that God may be the God of the heart; God repels none but those who separate themselves.
84. 3.30The soul that turns to idols is like an unfaithful wife who separates herself from her husband, and it perishes far from God.
85. 3.31The saint cleaves to Christ, hoping in him and praising the Lord.
86. 4.1Of all who lamented human frailty, Job was vehement and David gentle, like the deer he imitated.
87. 4.2Christ is the true deer, who in simplicity joined those who plotted against him and came willingly into the nets of the passion without being bound.
88. 4.3Christ, the stag of the Song of Songs, leaps over the mountains to his bride the church; winter has passed and the apostles have blossomed.
89. 4.4Christ the stag trampled the serpent; believers, his stags, need not fear its bite and go forward without looking back.
90. 4.5Christ the stag made his apostles stags who take up serpents, as Paul did; the stag also comes to baptism, as Christ came to John.
91. 4.6Like the thirsting deer, David longed to be freed from the body and to see God face to face, for death is gain to the just.
92. 4.7Tears of longing for righteousness are true bread, like bread cast on the waters, and repentance is consoled.
93. 4.8David pours out his soul in longing for the heavenly court, and poured-out prayer covers sins.
94. 4.9David wept with longing for God’s heavenly house; the church is the image of heavenly things, as the synagogue was their shadow.
95. 4.10David lamented his long exile on earth, though hope of heaven consoled him.
96. 4.11Christ too was troubled in soul, not from fear of a death he chose freely, but in longing for the grace it would accomplish.
97. 4.12In trouble, hope in God strengthens us, looking to the praise we shall give when we see his glory.
98. 4.13David admits his own trouble and seeks strength from God.
99. 4.14The Jordan (“descent”) recalls Naaman’s cleansing and Christ’s baptism, and Hermon (“way of the lamp”) the Gospel’s light; one must first come out of Egypt.
100. 4.15Christ is the true Jordan who divides: as the sword of the Word he searches hearts and apportions earthly and heavenly inheritance, yet is never alone without the Father.
101. 4.16Shechem, “ascending,” signifies the church and Mary, the bride who goes up shining with faith and works.
102. 4.17Christ is both the great mountain of divinity and the little mountain of the incarnation, the stone become a mountain, so that we may ascend.
103. 4.18The deep of the Old Testament called to the deep of the New, which Christ fulfilled; Christ and Scripture are the refuge in temptation.
104. 4.19Overwhelmed by the world’s waves, David turned to prayer, knowing God’s mercy is shown both in the law and in the night of temptation.
105. 4.20God is our “upholder” because he formed us like a potter; we are earthen vessels, and the wicked are written in the earth, the just in heaven.
106. 4.21God upholds us first by creating us and then by protecting us, like the eagle bearing its young.
107. 4.22God does not truly forget, but our sins make us unworthy of his regard; we ask him to remember our weakness and cleanse us by his gaze.
108. 4.23To be “cast” upon God from the womb is good, as Christ, in Psalm 22, was cast upon the Father and committed his spirit to him.
109. 4.24Ambrose rejects the addition of “Lord” to Christ’s last words, which were addressed to the Father.
110. 4.25The Son was cast from Mary’s womb, not the Father’s, from whom he never departed, being of one substance; from the womb he was always with God.
111. 4.26David’s second remonstrance longs for Christ’s delayed coming; the faithful soldier follows Christ’s standards and does not recognize the enemy’s.
112. 4.27The foreign signs are the devil’s marks, which the faithful refuse as the Hebrew youths refused Nebuchadnezzar’s image; faith must not lie open on the road.
113. 4.28Guard the summit of the heart against the enemy’s signs and axes; let Christ, who knocks, enter, and persevere with him.
114. 4.29David’s third remonstrance asks that his cause be separated from the wicked; some refer this to Christ, but David speaks foreseeing the passion.
115. 4.30Torn by inner conflict between mind and flesh, David prayed for Christ to come, break down the dividing wall, and bring light.
116. 4.31God answered David at once, leading him in spirit into the church before the altar of the world’s redemption.
117. 4.32Seeing the sacraments in spirit, David says “I will go in to the altar of God”: through Christ’s self-offering, better than Abel’s blood, humanity returns to God’s presence.
118. 4.33Isaiah shows that God rejected the old sacrifices, awaiting the true sacrifice of Christ’s passion, and was then reconciled.
119. 4.34Fallen humanity is like islands beaten by waves of sin; Christ’s coming renewed them and made harbors of peace among brothers.
120. 4.35David, renewed, goes to God’s altar: we are renewed by baptism, by the Spirit, and at the resurrection, made whiter than snow.
121. 4.36Our flesh, dead to sin and given the sevenfold Spirit in baptism, becomes a lyre sounding the music of good works to God.