Moralia in Job 1087

Verse 22. — 'There is no darkness, and there is no shadow of death, that they who work iniquity may be hid there.' None is hidden from the judgement of God, who neither forgets nor is ignorant of anything. — What did he seek to designate by 'darkness' but ignorance, and what by 'the shadow of death' but forgetfulness? For of the ignorance of certain men it is said: 'Having their understanding darkened with darkness' (Eph. 4:18). And again, of the forgetfulness which comes to pass in death it is written: 'In that day all their thoughts shall perish' (Ps. 145:4). Since, then, through death whatever is thought in life is utterly given over to oblivion, forgetfulness is, as it were, a kind of shadow of death.

For just as death, when it intervenes, makes that not to be which was in life, so forgetfulness, when it intervenes, makes that not to be which was in memory. Rightly therefore is it called its shadow, because it is drawn, as it were, from death itself, while by lulling the senses it imitates death's force. But since God neither is ignorant of men's evils even when merely thought, nor forgets them when perpetrated—unless they be blotted out from his eyes by repentance—it is fitly said: 'There is no darkness and there is no shadow of death, that they who work iniquity may be hid there.' As if he said: For this reason no one is hidden from his judgement, because he can in no wise either not see what we do, or forget what he sees. God is free from all mutability. Not so man, not the angels.

— Although 'darkness' or 'shadow of death' can also be understood otherwise. For all mutation is, as it were, a kind of imitation of death. For that which changes, as it were, slays from that which it was, so that it ceases to be what it was and begins to be what it was not. The true Light, therefore, namely our Creator, since he is darkened by no vicissitude of mutability, is overshadowed by no defects of his own nature, but his very being is to shine without mutability, is said to have in him neither darkness nor shadow of death. Whence elsewhere it is written: 'With whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration' (Jas. 1:17). And whence again the apostle Paul says: 'Who alone hath immortality, and inhabiteth light inaccessible' (1 Tim. 6:16).

But since we all know that both the human soul and the angelic spirits were created immortal, why is God alone declared by the apostle to have immortality, unless because God alone truly does not die, who alone is never changed? For the human soul would not have fallen into a lapse, had it not been mutable; and, expelled also from the joys of paradise, if it were not mutable, it would never return to life. But in this very fact that it strives to return to life, it is compelled to bear its own defects with an ever-alternating mutability. Since, then, it was created out of nothing, of itself it none the less tends below itself, unless it be held by the hand of its Maker unto the state of good desire. And for this reason, because it is a creature, it has a tendency to go downward.

For by its own power it beholds itself able to go headlong, but by the hand of love it holds itself back to its Creator, lest it fall, until it pass over to immutability, and truly live immortally there where it lives immutably. The angelic spirits too were created mutable by nature, so that they might either fall of their own accord or stand by their own choice. But because they humbly chose to cleave to him by whom they were created, they have now, by an immutability of standing, overcome this very mutability in themselves: so that they merited to transcend that very thing—to be subject to mutability—which by the order of their nature they might have been.

Since, then, it belongs to the divine nature alone not to suffer the shadows of ignorance and of mutability, let it rightly be said: 'There is no darkness, and there is no shadow of death, that they who work iniquity may be hid there.' For the eternal Light, which is God, the more immutably it shines, the more penetratingly it sees; and it neither is ignorant of the hidden, because it penetrates all things, nor forgets what it has penetrated, because it endures immutable. Accordingly, as often as we conceive anything unworthy in the heart, so often do we sin in the light, because that light is present to us though not to itself, and we who walk perversely dash against that very light from which by our desert we are far off. But when we believe ourselves not to be seen, we hold our eyes closed in the sunlight.

That is, we hide him from ourselves, not ourselves from him. Now therefore, while we are able, let us blot out from the sight of the eternal Judge both what we have wickedly thought and, worse, what we have wickedly perpetrated; let us call back before the eyes of the heart whatever we have done perversely through the presumption of wickedness. Let our infirmity in no wise flatter itself, nor in those things which it recalls softly stroke itself; but the more it is conscious of evil in itself, the more benignly severe let it be against itself; let it set before itself the coming judgement, and whatever it perceives in itself must be strictly stricken by the sentence of the Judge, let it piously strike in itself by the penitence of conversion. Whence fittingly, after the punishment of this violent man has been described, there follows: