Moralia in Job 1131

Ibid.—And having no foundation beneath it. 68. Whom the narrow pit of evil habit encloses, hell swallows up, and the abyss of despair. —Every sin has no foundation, because it subsists not of its own nature. For evil is without substance. Which nevertheless, howsoever it be, coalesces in the nature of good. Therefore the narrow mouth is said to have no foundation beneath it, because the pollution of sin has no proper right of subsisting. But because 'foundation' (fundamentum) is derived from 'bottom' (fundus), we can also, not unfittingly, take 'foundation' as put for 'bottom,' just as 'hearing' (auditus) is derived from 'ear' (auris), and yet very often the ear itself is designated by the name of hearing.

When, therefore, he had said 'the narrow mouth,' wishing to express the abyss of the deep, he subjoined: And having no foundation beneath it. For whom iniquity snatches away, hell swallows up. But hell is rightly believed to have no bottom, because whoever is snatched away by it is devoured in an immense depth. For the Prophet, wishing to express its immense breadth, says: 'Hell hath enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth without any bounds' (Isa. 5:14). As, therefore, he is said to be enlarged without bound who draws many to himself, so he is not unfittingly believed to be deep without a bottom, because those whom he receives into himself he swallows up, as it were in a certain abyss of his immensity. And so, when he had said: He shall save thee from the narrow mouth most widely, he fittingly subjoined:

And having no foundation beneath it. As if he said: From the narrow mouth He shall save that which has no bottom beneath it, because, since through sin one tends toward hell, whom He saves from sin, He delivers from the narrow mouth. But whom He rescues from the narrow mouth, He draws up from the depth of hell. 69. Although it can also be understood otherwise. For just as one who is plunged into a pit is held by the depth of the pit, so a soul, falling, would as it were stand still in a certain bottom-place, if, once slipped, it retained itself within some measure of sin. But since it cannot be content with the sin into which it falls, while it is daily cast down to worse things, it finds no bottom, as in a pit into which it has fallen, whereon to be fixed. For there would be a bottom of the pit, if there were a measure of the sin;

whence it is well said elsewhere: 'The sinner, when he is come into the depth of evils, despiseth' (Prov. 18:3). For he neglects to return, because he despairs that he can be pitied. But when by despairing he sins the more, he as it were withdraws the bottom from his own pit, that he may not find where he can be held. There follows: