Moralia in Job 1048

VERSE 4. — 'The Spirit of God made me, and the breath of the Almighty gave me life.' 18. Doctrine brought forth in disorder becomes barren and defiles. — Being about to add true things, he first put forward lofty ones; and being about to say what he rightly understood, he first made known how much he was puffed up. Thus indeed, thus do the minds of the arrogant rave, so that even in the things they rightly perceive they are corrupted by the crookedness of their own elation. Hence it comes about that they by no means instruct their hearers even by their right sayings, because assuredly, through the things they proudly perceive, they call them not to reverence for themselves but to contempt. And while foolish words are mingled with prudent sayings, because the folly is despised by the hearer, even the prudence is not held fast. For then it is said through Moses:

'The man who suffers a flux of seed shall be unclean' (Leviticus XV, 10). For what is speech, if not seed? When it is emitted in order, the mind of the hearer, like the womb of one conceiving, is made fruitful unto the offspring of a good work. But if it flows forth unseasonably, it defiles the one who emits it and loses the power of generating. For if speech were not seed, the Athenians would by no means have said of Paul as he preached: 'What will this sower of words say?' (Acts XVII, 18). Of whom Luke also says: 'For he was the leader of the word' (Acts XIV, 12). Seed therefore, appointed for the use of propagation, when it flows unfittingly defiles the other members; even as speech, through which knowledge ought to be born in the senses of hearers, if it come forth disorderly, defiles even those things which it rightly perceived.

Whence Elihu too defiles even those things which he can rightly perceive, while he is ignorant to whom or what he should speak; and he suffers, as it were, a flux of seed, when he moves a tongue fit for usefulness through the words of vain speech. Yet by a good order he narrates that he was both made and animated: made through the Spirit, and animated through the breath. For when Adam was made, it is written: 'He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul' (Genesis II, 7). But let us hear whether he rightly carries out those things which he rightly asserts. There follows: