Verse 17: 'I will show you, hear me; what I have seen I will declare to you.' 40. The proud, the higher they rise by understanding, the more grievously they fall by exaltation. — All the arrogant have this as their own peculiarity: that when they have perceived anything right or even small, they bend it to the use of exaltation; and whence they might become loftier than themselves through understanding, thence they fall through swelling into the pit of exaltation, and they esteem themselves more learned than the learned, they demand reverence for themselves from their betters, and they contend to teach the holier as though from authority. Whence now it is said: 'I will show you, hear me.' And because he who speaks the things he has heard teaches with less authority than he who speaks the things he has seen, that Eliphaz may arrogate to himself a stronger authority, he says:
'What I have seen I will declare to you.' But because sometimes the heretics are confounded by their condemned fathers, yet nevertheless they bring forward their opinions as though with authority into the midst — those by whose folly they are justly reproved — rightly is the very audacity of the heretics subjoined, when it is said: