Moralia in Job 1407

4. What it is for man to question God; and what it is for God to answer man. — To hear is proper to us, to lend an ear, placed in one spot, to a sound coming from elsewhere. But on the contrary, for God, to whom nothing is external, to hear is properly to perceive our desires arising beneath Himself. Therefore, for us to speak to God, who knows even the hearts of the silent, is not to bring forth by the voices of the throat that which we feel, but to gape with ready desires toward Him. And because each man questions for this reason, that he may be able to learn what he does not know, for man to question God is to recognize himself ignorant in His sight. But for God to answer is to instruct by hidden inspirations the one who has recognized himself humbly to be ignorant. Blessed Job, therefore, says: Hear, and I will speak. As if he said:

Mercifully perceive my desires, so that while Thy loving-kindness, perceiving them, gives aid, they may rise up manifold toward Thee. For good vows, as often as they receive fulfillment, are multiplied. Whence it is written elsewhere: I have cried out, because Thou hast heard me (Ps. 17:6). For he does not say: Because I cried out, Thou hast heard me; but I have cried out, because Thou hast heard me. For he who, speaking, had been heard, cried out, being heard, with his vows profiting: I will ask Thee, and do Thou answer me. As if he said: I recognize myself ignorant from the contemplation of Thy knowledge. Answer, therefore, the one who questions; that is, teach the one who humbly recognizes his own foolishness.

For that he questioned indeed out of a desire of humility, and sought that God should answer him out of the teaching of inspiration, is declared by the following words. For he professed that he would question, yet in questioning he subjoins nothing. For, feeling only humble things of himself, and acknowledging the things which he had mercifully received from the Lord, he at once subjoins: