Moralia in Job 157

Verse 12. And when they had lifted up their eyes from afar, they did not recognize him; and crying out they wept, and having rent their garments they sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. He who is about to console the afflicted ought to mourn. But let him set a measure to his grief. Because the plague had changed the appearance of the stricken one, the friends, weeping, cry out, rend their garments, sprinkle their heads with dust; so that when they beheld him changed, the one whom they had come to see, spontaneous grief might also change the very appearance of the consolers. For the order of consolation is this: that when we wish to lift some afflicted person from mourning, we should first strive by mourning to harmonize with his lamentation.

For he who does not harmonize with the grief of the sorrowing cannot console him, because by the very fact that he differs from the affliction of the mourner, he is the less received by him from whom he is separated in quality of mind. The soul, therefore, ought first to be softened, that it may conform to the afflicted; conforming, may cleave; cleaving, may draw him along. For neither is iron joined to iron unless both are melted by the burning of fire; and the hard does not adhere to the soft unless first its hardness, being tempered, grows soft, so that it may as it were become the very thing which is treated, that it may hold together. So too we do not raise up those who lie prostrate, unless we bend down from the rigor of our own standing; for while the uprightness of the one standing differs from the posture of the one lying, it in no way lifts him to whom it neglects to condescend.

The friends of blessed Job, therefore, that they might lift the afflicted man from grief, took care of necessity to grieve together with him; and when they saw his wounded body, they themselves strove to rend their garments; and when they beheld him changed, they strove to defile their heads with dust; so that the afflicted man might so much the more easily receive their words, the more he recognized in them something of his own affliction. But among these things it must be known that he who desires to console the afflicted must of necessity set a measure to the grief which he takes upon himself, lest he not only fail to soothe the sorrowing, but, grieving immoderately, press the mind of the afflicted down to the weight of despair.

For our grief is so to be joined to the grief of the mourning, that by moderation it may lift them up, and not by increase weigh them down. Whence perhaps it may be gathered that the friends of blessed Job grieved in their consolation more than was necessary, who, while they beheld the smiting, but knew not the mind of the stricken, were turned to boundless lamentation, as if the man stricken with such fortitude had, in the plague of the body, also fallen from the heart. There follows: