Verse 3. — 'Behold, ten times you confound me.' 30. Whether the just keep silence or speak, they always find the wicked to be adversaries. — By the numeral reckoning of the utterances of Job's friends, we know that they have as yet spoken only five times. But because he had heard rebukes from them five times, to whose rebukes he himself five times replied, he declares himself to have been confounded ten times; because he both laboured grievously in that he was rebuked in vain, and endured confusion in that he spoke words of teaching to those who would not hear. And so both when, hearing, he kept silence, and when, speaking, he was not heard, he himself bore the labour — he who, both by patiently keeping silence and by uselessly speaking to them, felt the grief of heart. Whence also above he says: 'What shall I do?'
If I speak, my grief will not be quieted; and if I keep silence, it will not depart from me' (Job xvi, 7). But if we refer these words to the figure of the holy Church, it is clear that it is her great joy to keep the precepts of the Decalogue. But the perverse confound her ten times, because through everything wherein they sin they forsake, by their depraved conduct, the precepts of the Decalogue, and they cause confusion to the good as often as in their deeds they resist the divine voices. There follows: