Chapter xx, Verse 2. — Therefore my various thoughts succeed one another, and my mind is snatched in diverse directions. 1. With how great a terror we ought to be affected by the constant consideration of it. — As if he said in open words: Because I consider the terror of the final judgment, therefore I am confounded in fear by the tumults of my thoughts. For the mind expands the more in thought, the more it weighs how terrible is that which is imminent. And the mind is snatched in diverse directions, when now the evils it has done, now the good things it has neglected to do, now the reprehensible things it is in, now the right things which it perceives to be still lacking to it, it ponders with anxious dread.
But the friends of blessed Job, being taught by the constancy of his life to know how to live well, yet not knowing how to weigh subtly the judgments of God, did not believe that any of the righteous could here receive evils. Whence they suspected that same holy man, whom they saw scourged, to be wicked; and out of this suspicion it came about that they slipped even into rebuking him — a rebuke to which nevertheless they descend as it were under a certain reverence. Whence Zophar subjoins, saying: