Verses 3, 4. — Behold, you have taught many, and you have strengthened weary hands; your words have confirmed those who wavered, and you have made firm trembling knees. 31. How great Job was, whose praises even he cannot keep silent who strives to bring a charge against him. — If the very text of the history is regarded, there is great profit for the reader, in that from friends who wrangle against blessed Job — in their tearing him down as of small worth — the proclamations of his virtues are brought forth. For never is the testimony of a life so robust as when he speaks the things to be praised who is striving to bring a charge.
Let us consider, moreover, of what loftiness this man was, who, teaching the unlearned, strengthening the weary, and confirming those who wavered, amid the cares of his household, amid the guardianship of manifold affairs, amid affection for his children, amid the pursuit of so many labors, spent himself in instructing others. And indeed, occupied with those things he carried them out, yet remained free to serve in the office of teaching doctrine. In governing he ordered temporal things; in preaching he announced eternal things; the uprightness of life he both showed to onlookers by acting and pressed upon hearers by speaking. But whether heretics or perverse men of any kind, when they report the good deeds of the righteous, they bend these into an argument for a charge.
For from that very source Eliphaz gathers an occasion for reproof against blessed Job, from which he had recounted praiseworthy things. For there follows: