Moralia in Job 1011

32. The saints willingly suffer injury, and beware of exacting too strictly what is owed them. — It was a custom among the ancients that the elders should sit at the gate, who might discern the strifes of contending parties by judicial examination; so that the discordant might by no means enter the city in which it behoved to live concordantly. Whence also through the prophet the Lord says: 'Establish judgement in the gate' (Amos 5:15). In this place, therefore, what is expressed by the name of 'gate' but that which was transacted in the gate? For just as we say that the camp fights, for the reason that fighting is done from the camp, so judgement, which was wont to be transacted in the gate, is named 'gate.' In the gate, therefore, he sees himself superior, who by the merit of equity beholds himself to be of the better part in judgement.

Blessed Job, therefore, because he stretched not out his hand against the orphan even then, when he saw himself the stronger even by the merit of justice, instilling into us a rule of fear, says: 'If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, even when I saw myself superior in the gate.' As if he plainly said: Not even then did I wish to prosecute the affairs of my own advantage by force against the orphan, when I saw myself the stronger in judgement even by justice. For holy men, when they undergo the affairs of contentions with lesser persons, while they fear to bear hard even in the smallest matters, by no means shrink from being borne hard upon themselves against justice. For they know that all human justice is convicted to be injustice, if it be judged strictly by God.

Whence they vehemently beware of exacting that which is due to themselves, lest their action subtly touch upon the supernal rectitude to be examined. But, that they may be able to be found just in the divine examination, for the most part they suffer themselves to be borne hard upon, even unjustly, before human judgements. But blessed Job, narrating the loftiness of his life — and many and wondrous are the things he said. But because for the most part the human mind refuses to believe good things which it knows not how to work, he straightway subjoins to himself the sentence of a curse, if he had not fulfilled in deed any of these things which he had said, saying: