Same place: 'Nor shall my eye return to see good things' (Job 7:7). 29. After death there is no place for earning pardon. — The eye of the dead does not return to behold good things, because the soul, stripped of the flesh, does not run back to perform righteous works. Hence it is that the rich man whom the flame of hell was tormenting, because he had recognized that he could not restore himself by working, took no pains for himself but only for his surviving brothers, saying: 'I beg you, father Abraham, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they too come into this place of torments' (Luke 16:27). For hope, even false hope, is wont to comfort a grieving soul. But that the reprobate may feel their punishment the more grievously, they lose even the hope of pardon.
Whence, delivered to the avenging flames, he longed — as we have said — not to help himself but his brothers, because he recognized that he would never be free from the torments of the fires, with the added punishment of despair. Hence Solomon says: 'Whatever your hand is able to do, do it earnestly, for neither work, nor reason, nor knowledge, nor wisdom will be in the grave, whither you are hastening' (Eccles. 9:10). By no means, therefore, shall the eye return to see good things, because the mind, finding its retribution, is in no way recalled to the exercise of working. Since, then, everything that is seen flees away, and the things that follow abide, blessed Job well embraced both in a single verse, saying:
'Remember that my life is wind, nor shall my eye return to see good things.' For contemplating the course of things present, he says: 'Remember that my life is wind.' But considering the eternity of the things that follow, he added: 'Nor shall my eye return to see good things.' Whereupon he fittingly takes up at once the voice of the whole human race destitute of the gift of redemption, saying: