Thou hast sealed up my iniquities in a bag, and hast noted if I have passed over anything unknowingly. How sweet a passage, which confirms us concerning the resurrection, and how fitting it seems to accord with the word of the Lord which is read in the Gospel, where he says: Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall upon us, and to the hills, Cover us. For at the consummation of the world there shall be the wrath of the Lord. Rightly therefore does the holy man prefer to rise again unto judgment rather than unto the time of the divine wrath, which is terrible even to the innocent. At the same time this too is understood to be prophesied when he says:
Thou shalt appoint me a time in which thou shalt make remembrance of me — namely, that he was to be raised up in the Passion of the Lord, as is shown at the end of that book. Yet he does not cease to lament; and the more he understands that the resurrection is set before him, the more he longs to flee this life, seeing himself handed over into the hands of his adversaries, cast into the power of the wicked, against whom even his friends have been turned into enemies, who, when they ought to have consoled him, heap ruin upon ruin. Yet, mindful of his pure conscience and of clean prayer, he says: O earth, cover not thou the blood of my flesh — that his prayer, like incense, might be directed to the Lord and not linger upon the earth. For the prayer of the holy man penetrates the clouds.
The earth, opening its mouth, hides the prayer of the sinner in the blood of the flesh, as was said by God to Cain the kinsman-slayer: Cursed, he says, art thou from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive the blood of thy brother from thy hand; for thou shalt till the earth. And so the holy man tearfully laments the times of this life. I perish, he says, and am borne about in spirit; I beg for burial and do not obtain it. I entreat in my toil. And what shall I do? My days have passed away in horror; the joints of my heart are torn asunder. Yet nowhere does he disparage the judgment of God; for he knows that the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God is profound, and his judgments unsearchable and his ways past finding out.
The sons of those who glorify, he says, have not trodden upon them, nor has the lion passed through them. For who has been able to comprehend his ways? Who has penetrated into the things hidden away? Whence, he says, is wisdom found, or what is the place of understanding? Mortal man knows not its way, nor is it found among men. The abyss said: It is not in me; and the sea said: It is not with me. It is not lawful for thee, O man, to know the heights of wisdom; therefore it is written for thee: Be not high-minded, but fear. Why dost thou curiously desire to search out what it is not expedient for thee to know, nor granted thee to understand?
Paul heard certain secrets of wisdom which he was forbidden to communicate to others, and therefore he was caught up into paradise, caught up even to the third heaven, that he might hear those things which, placed upon the earth, he could not hear. If a man heard things which it was not lawful for him to utter, how does he inquire after what he did not hear? It is not lawful for thee here on earth to know the counsels of this emperor — and dost thou wish to know things divine? It is not permitted thee to investigate too curiously what is done on earth — and dost thou too curiously seek out what is done above the heaven? Why dost thou dispute whence wisdom was born? Man knows not its way, nor has perfect wisdom been found among men: not in Moses, not in Aaron, not in Joshua the son of Nun, not in David himself who says:
The uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me — for he himself said in the latter parts: I have become as a beast of burden before thee. To know is above thee, O man; as for the height of wisdom, it is enough for thee that thou believe. For unless ye believe, he says, ye shall not understand. Thou canst not know the abyss, thou canst not comprehend the abyss; how shalt thou comprehend the height of wisdom? The abyss said: It is not in me — and canst thou say that wisdom is in thee? The abyss therefore said: It is not in me, because the Lord himself said: Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell. And the Apostle said: Who has descended into the abyss? This is to bring Christ up from the dead. If therefore the abyss is asked, Where is wisdom? it answers:
It is not in me, because he has risen again. If the sea is asked, Where is wisdom? it says: It is not with me, because he trod upon me, and my waves could not trouble it. And thou therefore, placed in the strait of this present age, do not seek that perfect wisdom of God in this world, because the world did not know it. But if thou wilt find it, tread upon the waves of this world, as Peter trod, and walk upon the waters of this age. Wisdom will stretch out to thee her right hand, as she stretched it out also to Peter, for there has been no one whom the wave of this present age has not troubled. It troubled Abraham too, it troubled Moses too, it troubled Peter too. Moses passed through the sea and led an army on foot through the sea, but first he himself was troubled.
Peter trod upon the waters, but he had been submerged in body, because he faltered in his footstep through weaker faith. Therefore do not seek wisdom in the sea, because the Lord Jesus did not say that he would be with the sea, but with his apostles, that they might in some part know him, to whom he says: Behold, I am with you even unto the consummation of the world. Blessed are they with whom he is — would that he were with us too; but with us is the sea. Peter is with Christ, because he too trod upon the sea; but our heart is set on gold and silver. Wisdom, however, is above gold, not in gold. Therefore he who desired to have wisdom said: Silver and gold I have not, but what I have I give thee: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.
Because he had no gold, he had in the name of Christ the grace of pious working. Therefore it is said to thee also: Draw wisdom into thine inward parts. It lay hidden, he says, from every man, and was concealed from the birds of heaven. Neither did men know where it was, nor the angels — for they are the birds of heaven, of whom it is said: And I saw an angel flying through heaven. No one could know wisdom, because no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall will to reveal him. He therefore revealed to John with whom wisdom was; and so John said not what was his own, but what wisdom infused into him: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. Wisdom knows not destruction, knows not malice.
For destruction could not hold her, who said: Where is thy victory, O death? Where is thy sting, O death? Malice knows her not, because she said: The wicked shall seek me and shall not find me. They can say: We have heard the report of her glory. God alone is he who knows her. Because God, he says, has well established her way; he himself knows her place. Hear his disciple telling what is the receptacle of wisdom: The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he himself has declared him. For the Son knew the Father, because he himself says: As the Father knows me, so I know the Father. The measure of knowledge is equal where the unity of power is.
The Father therefore, who knows all things, the weight of the winds, the measure of the waters, he himself saw wisdom and declared her through his prophets; for the Father declared wisdom and searched her out, just as the Son also declared the Father, whom nothing escapes, and said: O man, why dost thou wish to know the depths of wisdom, which are above you? To fear God is wisdom, and to abstain from evils is understanding. II (III). ON THE PLEADING OF HOLY JOB. Our earlier discourse was concerning the pleading of the saints — namely, that the frail and feeble condition of man, which nowhere has firmness of itself except in heavenly protection:
Today we must take up this theme: that the common run of men, and even many of the prudent, are greatly disturbed when they see the unjust abound in prosperous things, while the just are frequently afflicted in this present age. And truly this is a slippery place, in which even the saints could scarcely keep the footing of true opinion. Indeed even David himself was troubled, who had said in the preceding parts: The hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me. Yet afterward he steadied himself and searched out the way of perfect reasoning. Holy Job too, with those three old friends who had come to console him, wrestled in discourse over that opinion. Let us therefore bring forward into the open the disputations of both.
For they are worthy to bring us instruction for living, inasmuch as, placed in adversities, they merited to please God the more. Let us therefore hear both in their order. Eliphaz king of the Temanites, and Bildad the tyrant of the Shuhites, and Zophar king of the Minaeans had vehemently rebuked holy Job, on the ground that he was bearing so great a punishment because of his sins. For with feeble understanding they did not perceive that the Lord had given him over to be tempted, so that the athlete of Christ, schooled by temptations, might attain to the crown with the greater glory.
And so, not seeing so great a mystery of wisdom, in the fear of their narrow heart, lest they should seem to charge God with injustice — God who would allow the innocent to be afflicted with punishments — they turned the deserts of his sufferings back upon holy Job, saying that the whole life of the impious is spent in anxiety, and that riches unjustly amassed are vomited up; that whatever grievous things a man suffers on earth he suffers because of his sins; that even if a man be in prosperous circumstances, his good fortune cannot be perpetuated for him, but vanishes quickly like a dream, so that his place is not found; and that the joy of the impious is but the heavier ruin, and that therefore holy Job too had been changed from prosperity to adversity and, at the price of his transgressions, had fallen from the heights to the depths:
that he who asserts himself innocent stumbles, since the portion of the impious is such that the indignation coming upon him from the Lord rains down sorrows upon him and engulfs his house in destruction. Holy Job heard these things, and like a brave athlete, sitting upon the dunghill, amid so many welts and the savage pains of his wounds, his whole body steeped in dreadful sores, he spoke mysteries; and he was not occupied with seeking remedies for his own sickness, but had leisure for sacred discourses. The discourses of the sick man were therefore stronger than those of the men who were not sick. For they spoke injustices, but not according to knowledge: they proclaimed the divine judgments, the punishments of the guilty, the rewards of the saints, but they knew not how to distinguish the guilty from the just.
In short, the very man whom the Lord God pronounced just, they were condemning of injustice and arraigning of iniquity. They were ignorant therefore of what befitted each. But the holy man Job discerned in spirit how one ought to speak to each; he was therefore stronger than those who seemed sound and unimpaired. And why do I say he was found stronger than the rest? He was found stronger than his own self: for Job was stronger when sick than he had been when sound, according to that which is written, that strength is made perfect in weaknesses. Therefore Job too, when he was made weak, was then the mightier.
For he was not sick in soul, though he suffered in body, because his soul was not in the flesh, to whose passions it did not cling, but in the spirit, by whose strength he had clothed himself. Therefore he uttered not the groans of the flesh and the infirmities of the body, but the voices of the spirit, with which he might press hard, not with which he might yield. And at first indeed more gently, that he might strike them with shame, because they were pressing upon the just man unjustly, saying that he was bearing punishments less than his sins, and they themselves, sinners, were not ashamed to accuse the innocent with falsehoods. 'Be it so,' he says, 'that I have erred, and that there dwells within me that wanderer who pours errors into the minds of men, so that I speak words I ought not, as you say, and my words go astray and my speech is not uttered in season:
why do you leap upon me and revile me, not considering that this temptation came to me from the Lord, who judged that I should be hedged about as with some rampart of troubles? I am exercised by adversities, hemmed in on every side by labours and perils — and you insult me still, wishing to crush him whom you ought to help. Behold, I laugh amid reproaches, and I will not speak nor answer your revilings. For it is not you who judge, but it is the Lord who judges me; and yet the time of that judgment has not yet come. What need is there to cry out before the judgment?
It is good to be silent while he who judges is awaited; it is good not to return reviling for reviling, lest we too be numbered among the slanderers.' Let us therefore imitate this man, who by his silence refuted his revilers. For he showed the virtue of his soul, which insults could not move, and he made manifest the innocence of his conscience, who would not acknowledge the charges brought against him, but laughed at them as though foreign to himself. But we, as though something were charged against us, while we wish to clear ourselves, grow bitter; while we long to avenge ourselves, we confess. Whereas the Scripture says that thou shouldst turn away the word of disgrace and put off thy garment, for the injurious one passes by. Let us therefore be silent, that he may pass by, lest, provoked, he burn up our garment; for it is written:
Kindle not the coals of the sinner, lest perchance thou be burned up in the fire of his flame. Therefore the holy man is silent, even if the servant is insolent; even if the poor man reviles, the just man is silent; even if the sinner hurls reproaches, the just man laughs; even if the weak man curses, the just man blesses. David was silent when Shimei the son of Gera was cursing; Job laughed; Paul blessed, as he himself says: We are reviled, and we bless. By divine instruction indeed the advance of human virtue grew, because he had now come who would make the stronger out of the weak, and they had heard him say: Bless them that curse you, and pray for them that falsely accuse you. What he said in word, he also proved by example. Indeed, placed upon the cross, he said of his persecutors who reviled him:
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do — that he might pray for those who falsely accused him, whom he himself could have forgiven. Job therefore laughed, because Christ had not yet come, for whom alone was reserved the prerogative of mighty virtues, since he himself is the beginning of virtues, as he said: The Lord created me the beginning of his ways. And laughing, he kept silence. He teaches by what reasoning one must be silent: I will cry out — and not yet is it judgment. 'He himself,' he says, 'willed that I should suffer these things. As though shut in by ramparts of temptations, I cannot flee until it please God to destroy the heights of my temptations. For now, if I cry out, it is not yet judgment. I am still in the contest, still I wrestle, still the struggle remains for me; for the crown has not yet come forth;
and no one is crowned unless he has striven lawfully.' A third contest was owed to him. He had lost all his possessions, that is, his patrimony together with his children; his flesh was suffering wounds: it remained that he should overcome the temptations of words. No mean contest. By speech Adam was deceived; by a word Samson was overcome; for nothing so penetrates the soul as a feigned discourse, and again nothing so bites as a harsher word. Many who had conquered when torments were applied did not bear the hardness of words. Job laboured, but he endured and bore the burdens of words alongside those of his wounds. His master of the games saw him, and from the cloud and the whirlwind gave his hand to the labourer, and pronounced that his opponents had fallen with a heavy fall, declared him victor, and bestowed the crown.
And what is more beautiful than to laugh when we are cursed? For we ought to rejoice if things foreign to us are spoken. First, because the enemy, wishing to say something against us whereby he might fasten a charge, found not what is true, but composed falsehoods in place of truths. Then, because the Lord himself said in the Gospel concerning such accusation, which is falsely laid upon the innocent for righteousness' sake: Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven. He therefore ought to be silent who recognizes the charge, lest he exasperate the wound and the scar be torn open; and he ought to be silent who does not recognize it, for he hears another's crime, not his own. But if he answers it back, he makes it his own; if he is silent, he turns it back and wounds the reviler.
He too ought to be silent who presumes upon the aforesaid reward; for he suffers no prejudgment, for whom there is no judgment. And if there be a prejudgment in this age, it will not be at the judgment of God. Finally, that thou mayst know that contumely does no prejudice to a good conscience, hear holy Job saying — surely a richer witness than if he had gained possession of the empire of the Roman world: Now will I be silent and forsaken: if now there is prejudgment against me, then I shall not be hidden from thy face. These things therefore he answered more sparingly at the outset, that he might admonish them of the judgment of God, and, having recalled them from their insolence and fury, might, like a good physician, bring them back to their senses.
But after he perceived that they persevered in their contumelies, he repeated more and stronger things, and struck them as with a mightier fist — these men who were stoning the innocent with the stones of their words. Hear, he says, hear my words, let me not have to seek consolation from you; bear with me, for I shall speak stronger things, the weight of my words shall be heavy. I too will speak according to your opinion, namely that many abound in this age with the successes of prosperous affairs, while others are weighed down and set in distress: and this seems to be meted out according to the desert of sins. But although I say this, do not laugh, as though I had acquiesced with you. Even if I am a sinner, I am not answerable to a man, because he too is under sin who judges and claims power over me.
Or if I am judged as a man, this is common to all. I ought not to be rebuked: it is the weakness of our condition, not a special wickedness. But tell me: if I suffer this because of my sin, as you object, why do the impious live — and not only live, but are also filled with riches and multiply their fruits, and moreover gain children, and their houses abound? These things to outward appearance seem good, but by a deeper mystery thou shalt find that what are thought good are not good, and what are thought evil are esteemed better than they. They have grown old, he says, in riches.
He said pepalaiōntai ('they have grown old'), so that not so much a long-lasting possession of riches as an inveterate trouble of abundance might seem to be signified — even as Ecclesiastes saw riches kept to the hurt of him who possesses them, which perish amid the greatest distraction and anxiety. For the things that are here left behind perish, and cannot profit the dead. The dead man therefore had anxiety from them, and could find no rest, who left behind what made him ashamed and took with him nothing he might keep — far different from him of whom it is written: Blessed is the man who has fulfilled his desire from these; he shall not be confounded when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
He whose inheritance is the Lord, and whose reward is from the childbearing of the Virgin Mary, this man is proclaimed in the praises of wisdom at his departure, since he had nothing whereof to be ashamed, who coveted none of the things that are of the world, but, having laid aside the spoils of the old man, wounded the adversary with the dart of continence, so that the enemy could not gainsay him at the end of this life, being lamed by the wound and confounded by admiration of his virtues. Thou hast therefore that he is not praiseworthy who has grown old in the greed for money and has not been renewed in the receiving of grace. Let us see another point: Their seed, he says, is according to the soul — that is, they are not reckoned among the just.
For the just sow in spirit and of the spirit shall reap life eternal, but those who sow according to the soul cannot reap spiritual things, because the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot know the things that are of the Spirit, and therefore he is not filled with spiritual things, but is judged. Their children are in the eyes — that is, what they do, they do that they may be seen by men. Not that they take counsel for what is good, so as to choose that which would be approved in the future judgment. Scripture therefore frequently declares children in place of works, inasmuch as our posterity is richer in good deeds than in children.
Whence Hezekiah too, freed from a grievous sickness, says: From this day I will beget children who shall declare thy righteousness, O Lord of my salvation, and I will not cease blessing thee with the psaltery all the days of my life; for good is the posterity of devotion and faith, which knew not how to succumb to captivity — which Hezekiah's children bore. And he added, saying that they have no fear, there is no scourge from the Lord. But the just man says: For I have been scourged all the day long, and he chooses to be scourged, that he may be received by the Lord, and he wishes to fear God, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Nor does he count it blessedness if his heifer does not cast its young, as fools count it.
For by the ox what is signified but the labour of rural cultivation, which always returns in a circle and never ceases, but when it seems to be completed, is called back to its beginning? These are they who cultivate Sodom and Gomorrah. Therefore those who cultivate Egypt and turn over the clods of the earth with the plough, as it were, of a solid mind, bring forth labour for themselves and reap sorrows. Therefore their heifer does not cast its young, but bears, that their labour may be increased; and they bring forth all that they have conceived without the fear of God. But the just glory far otherwise; for they glory not in the abundance of riches nor in the offspring of cattle, but in the Lord, saying: From thy fear we have conceived in the womb and have brought forth the spirit of salvation.
Of the just therefore it is said that they have begotten the spirit of salvation, which they received from the fear of God, not from the malice of this age, of which we read: Behold, it has travailed with injustice, and conceived toil, and brought forth iniquity. Better therefore is the miscarriage than the birth of worldly men. Finally, of the man who comes into this world and endures the vanity of this world and its darkness through a long span of years, Ecclesiastes pronounced that the miscarriage is better than he. For to this one there is rest rather than to that other, because it did not experience the changeableness of the age, in which, even if one should live a thousand years, he could not see what is good. To have fled these things, therefore, is more a matter of grace than to have undergone them.
But perhaps this may disturb thee, that he added that they remain like eternal sheep, while their children play, taking up the psaltery and the harp, and are delighted with the voice of the psalm. They have consummated their life in good things, but in the rest of hell they have slept. Distinguish these things, and, since thou art spiritual, judge. The impious are as it were eternal, not eternal, because they cannot receive eternity from him who is not eternal. He cannot therefore give what he has not, nor can he illuminate who does not possess light; but he transfigures himself into an angel of light, that he may deceive the unbelieving. He transfigures himself, however, by the pretence of a false light, not by the splendour of perpetual brightness. Whence the Saviour also says: I beheld Satan falling like lightning from heaven.
It is not lightning, but as it were lightning. Consider some heretic intent upon abstinence of the body and upon the knowledge of heavenly mysteries: he is reckoned as it were eternal, yet has not the wage of eternal life, because he has a false imitation who has not the truth of faith. The little ones of such a man play like that woman who, when she has played the wanton, wishes to marry. She played the wanton with psaltery and harp — that is, in the sound of the voice, not in the depth of the sacraments, so that she might echo with the lips, not bring it together in the heart. Such men therefore have consummated their life in the good things of this age — this very life, indeed, which they were living, not that whose reward they hoped for — and therefore in the rest of hell they slept, not in the heavenly rest.
But let us rather pray to undergo labour here, that in the kingdom of heaven we may merit to obtain the consolation of eternal rest. For the affluence of prosperous things is a great enticement to wrongdoing: it lifts up into pride, it infuses forgetfulness of the Author. Consider that rich man in the Gospel, reclining upon scarlet and purple, from whose table that just poor man Lazarus gathered the crumbs: does it not seem to thee that the rich man says to God, Depart from me; I will not know thy ways? And truly such men do not wish to know the ways of the Lord; for if they wished, they would know them, but because they are full of labour, they are shunned and turned away from by the lost. And so, as though drunken, he does not recognize the Author of salvation.
Then, turning to his drinking-companions, he says, 'Let us eat and drink. What does it profit us if we serve Him? Or what advantage is there if we observe Him?' These things, then, the man says who is drunk with the abundance of worldly goods, because the deserts due to wickedness are not requited immediately in this world. For he lay sprawled at ease, since all things lay ready at hand for his pleasure; and, conscious of his own impiety—whose punishment was held in abeyance—he supposed that God did not see the crimes of the wicked. To this opinion of his, then, holy Job replied: Do not be carefree and dissolute, supposing that in this very age the scourges of the Lord do not come upon you. Even the lamp of the wicked is extinguished. It shines for a time; it has no eternal light.
And although the world favors these men—because they do the will of him who holds dominion in this world—yet there is wont to come a reversal of fortunes and sorrows from the heavenly wrath and indignation, so that they are winnowed like chaff before the wind. The unjust are winnowed like chaff, the just like wheat. Hear, then, the Lord saying to Peter: 'Behold, Satan has desired to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.' Those fail who are winnowed like chaff; he does not fail who is after the likeness of that grain which fell and rose again, multiplied by the increase of many fruits. Therefore the prophet says: 'Woe is me, for I have become like one who gathers stubble in the harvest!'
To stubble, then, which is quickly burned up, impiety is compared, and to dust. Therefore, after he had said, 'They shall be like chaff before the wind,' he immediately added a verse, saying, 'Or like the dust which the wind carries away.' And so that you may know that the impious man quickly crumbles and vanishes like dust, you have it said in the first Psalm: 'Not so the impious, not so'—that is, not like the just, but as the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth. And he makes a distinction between the just and the impious. This man, he says, dies in the strength of his own simplicity, wholly in abundance and ease, and his inward parts are full of fat, their marrow overflows. But that one finishes the course of this life in bitterness of soul and, having feasted on nothing good, receives his end.