Lecture 1 — Job calls on God

^17:1^ My spirit will be weakened, my days grow short and nothing remains for me but the tomb.

^17:2^ I have not sinned and my eye lingers on bitter things.

^17:3^ Free me and place me near you, and do not let the hand of anyone who pleases fight against me.

^17:4^ You have made their hearts far from discipline, yet they will not be lifted up.

^17:5^ He promises plunder to his companions and the eyes of his son see nothing.

^17:6^ He has used me as a proverb to the crowd and as an example in their midst.

^17:7^ Anger blinded my vision and my limbs are reduced to almost nothing.

^17:8^ The just are astonished at this and the innocent aroused against the hypocrite.

^17:9^ The just will preserve his course and add courage with his clean hands.

268. My spirit will be weakened. Job had shown above the great number of his afflictions (Job 16:14), the humiliation of his mind (Job 16:16), his innocence (Job 16:18), and the brevity of a life definitively lost (Job 16:23), and so he corrected his friends of vain speech. In this chapter then, he intends to prove these things and finally conclude as to their ignorance (Job 17:10).

First, he begins to prove what he had said about the process of human life, and he presents beforehand the cause of the shortness of life when he says, my spirit will be weakened. For the life of the body is from vital spirits which are diffused from the heart to all its members. The body lives as long as they are strong in the body. But when the natural caloric power (energy) begins to grow weak in the heart, this spirit grows less. By this growing less and debilitation he means the spirit is weakened. He then states the effect of this cause, saying, my days grow short. For weakness of the vital spirit shortens the days of life. To answer the objection that a spirit once weakened in existence of this mortal life, would again be strengthened according to kind, he says, nothing remains for me but the tomb, because once the span of this present life is finished, nothing more of this present life remains for me except the grave, and those things which pertain to the grave.

269. Then he shows their consolation to be vain in another way. For they consoled him, saying sin was the cause of the adversities of his present life, and that if he repented, then he would return to prosperity. But he rejects this, saying, I have not sinned, because he did not have the remorse of conscience from some grave sin for which he had incurred such great adversity. Thus he says later in the text, for my heart does not accuse me of anything my whole life long (Job 27:6). Thus he is not against what is said in John, if we say we have no sin, we lie to ourselves (1 John 1:8). By this he explains what he had said above about his innocence, I have suffered these things without having evil on my hands (Job 16:18). He then says, and my eye lingers on bitter things. He uses the plural, bitter things, because of the many adversities which he had enumerated above. He says lingers because although he had humbled himself among bitter things and sewn up a sack over his skin (Job 16:16), those bitter things will nevertheless remain.

He attributes bitter things to the eye because of the weeping they cause, which he already expressed, saying, my face was puffed up from weeping (Job 16:17), and again, my eye drips for God (Job 16:21), because as his eye was weeping among the bitter things, he asked only for divine help, and that is why he continues here, free me. For Job understood that he alone could free him who placed him in the power of the evil one (Job 16:12). Truly, he was not praying to be freed from adversity as one who would procure earthly prosperity afterward, but he prayed to be led to spiritual depth, and so he then says, and place me near you. For since God is the essence itself of good, it is necessary that he who is placed close to God be freed from evil. Man is placed near to God insofar as he approaches him in his interior self through knowledge and love, but this happens imperfectly, in the state of a sojourner on earth, in which man suffers temptations. Because he is placed near to God, however, he will not be overcome by them. Man is perfectly placed near to God in his interior self in the state of ultimate happiness, in which he cannot suffer from temptations, and he shows he desires this, saying, do not let the hand of anyone who pleases fight against me, because no matter who would want to fight against me, if I were placed perfectly near to you, no attack would disturb me. This, then, is what Job had for his consolation in the midst of bitter things, hoping to be placed near to God, where he could not fear temptations.

270. The prattling friends of Job did not understand this spiritual consolation of Job, and so he then says, you have made their hearts far from discipline, from your spiritual discipline, through which you teach one to hope for spiritual goods and to hold temporal goods in contempt. Since they only place their hope in things weak and timebound, they cannot arrive at spiritual depth and be placed near to God. He therefore expresses this, saying, yet they will not be lifted up. From the fact that they were far from spiritual teaching, he concludes that Eliphaz promises only temporal goods to Job as a consolation (Job 5:18), and he expresses this, saying, he promises plunder to his companions, that is, the procurement of temporal goods, which can only be chosen by us in losing other goods. So the acquisition of temporal goods is compared to plundering. It is not universally true that after repentance men recover temporal prosperity, since the good do not always enjoy temporal prosperity, and so then he says, the eyes of his sons see nothing. His sons are those who believe his promised hope for temporal rewards for the goods which they do, but when they do not attain them, their eyes see nothing, like people without hope. Just as Eliphaz promised temporal things to those doing good, so also he asserted that all temporal adversities came because of the sins of the one who suffered. Since Job had suffered many adversities, Eliphaz uses him as an example to ordinary people, and he expresses this, saying, he has used me as a proverb to the crowd and as an example in their midst. This is because he used Job as an example, to prove his opinion about the cause of adversity, presuming he was punished for sin.

271. However, it is characteristic of the zeal of the just to be indignant when they see the righteousness of divine judgments perverted by false doctrine.

So Job consequently shows the greatness of his zeal in two ways:

first, by a kind of disturbance of the mind. Vicious anger blinds the eye, but zealous anger disturbs the eye, as Gregory says. So he then says, anger darkened my vision, the sight of my reason. For the concentration of reason is disturbed by zealous anger.

Second, zealous anger also produces excitement in the body through pathos. Thus, we read in Maccabees that Matthias, seeing the Jews sacrifice to idols, felt anguish and he trembled in the depth of his being (1 Macc 2:23–24). So he adds here, my limbs are reduced to almost nothing, because the body of man seems to pine away from pathos. One could think that this obscurity of sight is against justice, and this anger against innocence.

So to reject this, he then says, the just are astonished at this, for the just are rightly astonished when they see the doctrine of evil men, and this astonishment says more than obscurity. The text continues, and the innocent aroused against the hypocrite, saying in effect, “It is not against innocence if someone is roused in anger against the hypocrite, who perverts true doctrine from a zeal for justice, and since, as has been said, zealous anger disturbs the soul but does not blind it, the just man is astonished or obscured by his zeal to not retreat from justice.” He expresses this, saying, the just will preserve his course, because he does not desert it from zealous anger. Such anger does not precede reason but follows it, and so it cannot separate a man from justice. Zealous anger is really useful because it makes a man arise against evil with greater strength and courage of soul. He expresses this, saying, and add courage with his clean hands, incited by zeal, as Aristotle says in the Ethics, that anger aids courage.