Moralia in Job 1167

VERSE 9. — 'Out of the inner chambers cometh the tempest, and cold out of Arcturus.' 51. Christ suffered persecution from Jews and Gentiles. — When Holy Scripture mentions the 'inner chambers' over against Arcturus, it designates the region of the South, opposite to the parts of the North. Whence in this same book it is written: 'Who maketh Arcturus and Orion, and the inner chambers of the South' (Job IX, 9). Since, therefore, the more fervent sun holds the inner chambers of the South, but in Arcturus has no course at all, by the name of the 'inner chambers' the Jewish people is expressed, and by the word 'Arcturus' in this place the Gentile people. For those who had known the one and invisible God, and served His law at least carnally, were held, as it were, fervent under the meridian sun in the warmth of faith.

But the Gentiles, because they had attained no knowledge of the supernal understanding, remained as it were without heat, cold under the North. But because a tempest drives, while cold oppresses with torpor, it is rightly said now: 'Out of the inner chambers cometh the tempest, and cold out of Arcturus.' As if it were said openly: From the Jews arises persecuting malice, and from the Gentiles the pressing power. For the precepts of the law had not forbidden miracles to be done, and yet the Jews sought, on account of those very miracles, to slay the Redeemer of the human race (John XI, 48). Whence, being unable to accomplish what they had begun, they ran together to Pilate's judgment hall, that he might destroy Him whom no law restrained from being unjustly destroyed (John XVIII, 28).

From the inner chambers, therefore, came the tempest, and from Arcturus the cold, when what Judea sought out of envy, this the Gentile judge carried out by Roman authority. Whence it is well added against this same envy: