Moralia in Job 1119

CHAPTER 36, VERSES 1, 2. — 'Elihu also, adding, spoke these things too: Bear with me a little, and I will show thee.' 41. From much talking they measure their own doctrine. While they show themselves off, they pretend to speak for God. — He had already said many things, and yet hopes to be borne with a little longer, since evidently the arrogant judge that they suffer grave loss if they restrain their knowledge by brevity of speech. For they believe they show themselves the more learned, the more they can display themselves by the manifold nature of their talkativeness. But because they often perceive that the reverence of silence is not paid to them, they sometimes intimate the power of the Lord, of whom they seem to speak, and under the pretext of Him they exact for themselves a silence which they by no means deserve;

and while in appearance they put forward God, exacting a hearing for themselves out of reverence for Him, they strive rather to display themselves than to proclaim His deeds. Whence Elihu also adds, saying: IBID. — 'For I still have that which I may speak for God.' But because holy teachers sometimes frequently repeat whatever they say more obscurely, that they may instill into the hearts of their hearers by the voice of this repetition the hidden things they preach, the arrogant often desire to imitate even this, and insolently repeat those things which they have said, not because they seek to instill the matters into the hearts of their hearers, but because they wish to seem eloquent in their judgment. Whence Elihu, subjoining, says: VERSE 3. — 'I will repeat my knowledge from the beginning.' But because, once knowledge was named, the swelling of the heart had shown forth in his voice;

the arrogant man is openly recognized, unless he is more quickly veiled over by some covering. Whence, immediately introducing the justice of the Lord as a concealment of his arrogance, he says: IBID. — 'And I will prove my Maker to be just.' That while he seems to speak for God's justice, whatever flows forth arrogantly may be excused before human judgments. There follows: