Lecture 2 — God teaches men in many ways

^33:12b^ I will answer you that God is greater than man.

^33:13^ You contend against him because he will not answer all your arguments.

^33:14^ God speaks once and he does not repeat the same thing a second time

^33:15^ in a dream, in a vision of the night. When deep sleep falls through vapors ascending to the sources of sensing and they sleep in bed,

^33:16^ then he opens the ears of men and he educates and instructs them in his discipline

^33:17^ to turn a man aside from what he does and to free him from pride.

^33:18^ He rescues the soul from corruption and his life so that he does not perish from the sword.

^33:19^ He is also chided by pain on his bed, and he makes all his bones grow feeble.

^33:20^ Bread becomes abominable to him during his life and food of the soul which he desired before becomes abominable.

^33:21^ The flesh of that man will waste away and the bones which were hidden will be laid bare.

^33:22^ His soul will approach corruption and the life of that man will approach the danger of death.

^33:23^ If there should be one angel who speaks for him, one of the thousands to announce the justice of that man,

^33:24^ he will have mercy on me and he will say: Deliver him from going down into corruption, and I have found how I can pardon him.

^33:25^ His flesh has been consumed by punishment; let him return to the days of his youth.

^33:26^ He will invoke God in prayer and he will be pleased with him, and he will see his face in joy and he will render his justice to man.

^33:27^ He will consider man and he will say: I have sinned, I have truly perverted what is right, and I did not receive what I merited.

^33:28^ For he freed my soul from going to destruction but in living my soul might see light.

^33:29^ Behold, God works all these things in three ways for each one

^33:30^ to call their souls back from corruption and to enlighten them with the light of the living.

^33:31^ Listen, Job, and hear me; be silent and I will speak.

^33:32^ If, however, you have something to say, answer me, speak; for I want you to be known as just.

^33:33^ But if you do not, hear me, be silent and I will teach you wisdom.

437. I will answer you that God is greater than man. Eliud has already proposed those things which he intended to dispute with Job. Since it is true that Job, before he had spoken the words Eliud cites (Job 33:10–11) had said, I desire to dispute with God, it seems unfitting that he who desired eagerly to take up the dispute with someone higher should refuse to dispute about this with an inferior. Before Eliud begins to argue with Job about these things, he reproaches him with the very fact that he desired to argue with God. First, it takes great presumption to provoke someone superior to argue. So he says, I will answer you, your desire to dispute with God, that God is greater than man, and so it is presumptuous for man to wish to dispute with God. In this, he would justly accuse Job if Job wanted to dispute with God, to contradict him as an equal. Job, however, wished to dispute with God to learn, as a student does with a master. So he said, I will fill my mouth with rebukes to learn how he answers me (Job 23:4). Yet Eliud interpreted this as though Job spoke contentiously against God, complaining that he had not answered him, and so he then says, you contend against him because he will not answer all your arguments. He wanted to take this from these preceding works of Job, and from what he said: behold, I will shout out violently in my suffering and no one will hear. I cried out and there was no one to judge (Job 19:27). Job did not say these words and others with them in a contentious manner, but because he desired to know the reasons of divine wisdom.

438. To refute the preceding words of Job, which Eliud interpreted as spoken contentiously, Eliud shows that God does not necessarily have to answer every single problem posed to him by man, but he speaks sufficiently to each one for his instruction, and so he then says, God speaks once, sufficiently for the instruction of man. So then he does not have to answer each of the questions of man, and therefore he says, and he does not repeat the same thing a second time, since he did it sufficiently, and it would be superfluous to go over it again. He shows how God speaks to man, then saying, in a dream, in a vision of the night. There can also be another meaning, so that when he says, God speaks only once, to man, it refers to the instruction of the mind which is by the light of natural reason, as the Psalm says, many say: “who will show good things to us?” and the light of your face shines upon us, O Lord (Ps 4:6–7), in this one discerns good from evil. Since natural reason remains unchangeable in men, and as a result it is not necessary to renew it, he therefore says, and he does not repeat the same thing a second time. Then he shows another way in which God speaks to man, which is the imaginary vision in the apparitions of dreams, and so he says, in a dream, in the visions of the night. This can be referred to prophetic revelations, according to Numbers: if anyone is a prophet of the Lord among you, I will speak to him either in dream or in vision (Num 12:6), or, this can be referred to ordinary dreams, which Eliud believed come from God.

439. He explains then the manner and the order of the dreams.

First, he touches on the natural cause when he says, when deep sleep falls upon men,* *which happens when the external senses are immobilized by vapors ascending to the sources of sensing.

Second, he places the disposition on the part of the human will when he continues, and they sleep in bed, because men experience dreams which are especially ordered and filled with meaning when they sleep restfully. To the sick, then, dreams appear distorted because of lack of rest; so Daniel says, *your dream and the visions in your head, which you had on your bed mean this: you, O king, began to think on your bed *(Dan 2:28).

Third, he places the divine action in the one sleeping. When the exterior senses are immobile in sleep and a man is resting quietly in bed, a certain divine ability is given to a man to perceive divine instruction, because his spirit is not preoccupied with exterior things, and so he says, then he opens the ears of men. By ears he fittingly enough expresses the ability to perceive divine instruction in dreams, because he speaks about this kind of instruction like a kind of language, which does not result from the experience of things themselves, but in signs, as is also true in languages.

Once he gives the ability to hear him, the consequence is that he can teach, and so he continues, and he educates them and instructs them in discipline. Here, discipline is taken for the instruction which tells a man what should be done and avoided, not for the knowledge of the speculative sciences, which are usually not revealed in sleep. So he says, to turn a man aside from what he does. For man is frequently corrupted in sleep by sins he has committed. Since pride is the root of sin, because by it one holds the commandments of God in contempt, he then says, and to free him from pride. Once man is free from fault, consequently he escapes punishment.

He shows he escapes two kinds of punishments.

First, he expresses the spiritual punishment of the soul, he rescues his soul from corruption, caused by the disorders of the powers of the soul.

Second, concerning corporeal punishment, he says, and his life, the corporeal one, so that he does not perish by the sword, when he is punished for his sin. Or, both can be referred to bodily death, which is sometimes produced by interior corruption, as when someone dies from sickness, which God sends for his sin. This can also happen from the violence of the sword.

440. Then he discusses the fact that God can also speak and correct man through the sickness of the body.

He first notes sensible pain here, and so he says, he, namely, man, is also chided, for past sins, by pain, which is the corporeal pain which comes from sickness. So he says, on his bed, according to the Psalm, upon his bed of pain (Ps 40:4).

Second, he notes the weakness of the sickness when he says, and he makes all of his bones grow feeble, when he destroys the strength which is found in the bones.

Third, he places the loss of appetite when he says, bread, which is common food, becomes abominable to him during his life, while he still lived, because of sickness, and the food of his soul, which he desired before, became abominable, which refers to other foods, which fulfilled the various needs of people.

Fourth, he places leanness when he says, the flesh of that man will waste away, that is, it will fail, and, consequently, the bones which were hidden, by flesh, will be laid bare, because they will appear to be covered only by skin.

Fifth, he places the danger and fear of death, saying, his soul will approach corruption, which refers to his life, which lives because of his soul. So he adds, and the life of that man will approach to the danger of death, the causes bringing death.

441. Note he had proposed this to answer the lament of Job that God did not answer each of his questions in detail. For he wanted to prove by the preceding things that God had spoken to him in three ways:

first, by natural reason, as he does to all men,

second, by declaring things in dreams, for he had already said, *you will terrify me with dreams and you will strike me with horror in visions *(Job 7:14);

third, by weakness, as he had already said, *now my soul droops within me *(Job 30:16). In the same way one must consider that Eliud, like the other three, believed that the weaknesses of men come from the sin, yet not principally as a punishment, like the other three said, but more as a correction.

442. Since Job seemed to lament not only that God had not spoken to him, but also that he could not approach to have a discussion with God and to plead his case before him (cf. Job 33:3), he therefore wants to make a satisfactory answer to this question. Although the approach to God does not clearly lie open to a man, still, the angels are the mediators between God and men, who propose the justice of man to God not to teach him, but to help men in their desires. So there is no lack in man to propose the justice of his cause to him, even if he is unable to approach the divine throne through his own powers without aid. To prove this he says, if there should be for him, for the afflicted man, an angel who speaks, intercedes, and so he does not fear that one angel would not suffice to intercede for all, he then says, one of the thousands, according to what the text already said, can one number his hosts? (Job 25:3), to announce the justice of the man, to propose in the presence of God if anything is just on the part of a man. He, God, will have mercy on his own, on the man afflicted, and he will say, that is, he will order the angel, deliver him, for just as he is the one who brings forward the justice of man in the presence of God, so also he is the executor of the divine mercy in the presence of man.

He then explains what he must be freed from, saying, from going down into corruption, to death. He then shows that this freedom pleases God when he says, speaking in the person of God, I have found how I can pardon him, because the just thing I was seeking appears in man, and because of this, I can have mercy on him. Since Job had said, my flesh is clothed with corruption (Job 7:5), so that he could not be restored, he excludes this, saying, his flesh has been consumed by punishment, as if to say, “This is not injurious to my power,” and so let him return to the days of his youth, let him recover the strength of a young man.

443. Therefore, after he has suggested the words of God which will free him, Eliud uses his own words to describe the manner of human liberation, saying, he will invoke God in prayer, for it is not enough for an angel to speak for him, but to be freed he must also pray for it himself. Or this text can be interpreted in another way. For because he had shown clearly that man is able to lament that he cannot place his case in the presence of God, since an angel proposes it there for him efficaciously (Job 33:23), now he shows that he too can place it there for himself in prayer. To show that this is as effective as the first way, he says, and he, God, will be pleased with him (man), according to the words of the prophet Joel, he is kind and merciful and placated about evil (Joel 2:13). From this it follows that man can have confidence in thinking about God with some spiritual joy, and so he says: and he, man, will see his face, for he will consider his goodness imperfectly in the present life and perfectly in the future life, in joy, which is in some way inexplicable. And, so, he, God, will render his justice to man, because he will reward him for his merits, after he has removed the impediment of sin.

But this is not possible unless man humbly recognizes and confesses his sins, and so he says, he will consider man, and spontaneously offer himself for the confession of sin, and so he continues, and he will say, I have sinned. So one does not think that he has said this from humility, he adds, and I have truly perverted what is right. He says this against Job because Job had said, I have not sinned and my eye lingers on bitter things (Job 17:2). In his confession he will not lament about the gravity of the punishment, and so he says, and I did not receive what I merited, where he implied I merited a graver punishment, and he says this against what Job had said, if only my sins were weighed in which I merited anger (Job 6:2). He shows the fruit of humility, saying, for he freed my soul, in confessing my sin, from going to destruction, which refers to death, corporeal or spiritual. He also wants to attain further goods, and so he says, but in living, my soul will see the light, which is either the corporeal light or the spiritual light of wisdom.

444. Because God does not immediately and finally damn man, but warns him many times, he says, behold, all these things, the instruction through dreams and rebuke through pain and healings, God works in three ways, many times for as long as he thinks them useful. But he uses the number three to conform to human usage, in which men are usually warned or summoned three times. God does this not only for one, but for all those in need of it, and so he says, for each one, whom he sees must be instructed and chided. He explains the usefulness of this, saying, to call their souls back from corruption, which expresses freedom from evil, and to enlighten them with the light of the living, which expresses the attainment of good things. Both of these can be applied to corporeal or spiritual goods. When he says here three ways, this should refer to the two second modes of God speaking. For about the first he has said that, he will not repeat it a second time (Job 33:14). He introduces this to show the reason why sinners sometimes remain in prosperity and are not immediately damned.

445. Since it seemed to him that he had spoken effectively, he invites Job to listen quietly to the things which remain. He says, listen, Job, in your heart, and hear me, with your ears, be silent while I speak, and do not interrupt me. Lest he seem to inhibit his ability to answer, he says, if, however, you have something to say, answer me, and as though he desires his answer, he says, speak. Then, he shows the cause of his desire, saying, I want you to be known as just. He says this to show that he does not intend to humiliate him. Since he did not believe that Job was just, he then says, but if you do not have, something to say on behalf of your justice, hear me, be silent, and I will teach you wisdom, of which you are ignorant.