Moralia in Job 198

Verse 10. 'Because it shut not up the doors of the womb that bore me, nor took away evils from my eyes.' 22. Paradise is the womb of the human race, whose doors the serpent opened. What the mother's womb is to each single man, that supreme dwelling of paradise stood to the whole human race. For from it the offspring of the human race went forth as from a womb, and, as toward the increases of the body, so toward the increases of propagation it flowed forth abroad. There our conception grew together, where the origin of men, the first man, dwelt. But the serpent opened the doors of this womb, because by crafty persuasion he dissolved the heavenly commandment in the heart of man. The serpent opened the doors of this womb, because he burst into the enclosures of the mind fortified by supernal admonitions.

The holy man, therefore, in the punishment which he endures, brings back the eyes of his mind to the fault. Let him grieve at this, that the dark night, that is, the obscure suggestion of the ancient enemy, brought upon human minds; let him grieve at this, that the human mind consented in its own deception to the crafty suggestion, and let him say: 'Because it shut not up the doors of the womb that bore me, nor took away evils from my eyes.' And let it not disturb that he complains of one not having shut, whom he detests for having opened the gate of paradise. For to say 'shut not up' is to say 'opened'; and 'took not away evils' is to say 'inflicted them.' For it is as though he would take them away, if he kept quiet; and as though he would shut, if he ceased from the incursion.

For he weighs of whom he speaks, and considers that it would have been as though the depraved spirit had granted us gains, if he had not inflicted losses. Thus we speak of robbers, that they grant life to their captives, if they will not have taken it away. 23. The moral sense. It pleases us to take these things again from the beginning, and, from that which we recognize in the use of the present life, to treat them again morally. [Old recension

XVII] Blessed Job, considering, after the human race fell from its state of mind, with how great a confidence it is lifted up in prosperous things, or with how great a perturbation it is broken by adverse things, recurs in mind to that state of immutability which he could have possessed in paradise, and, cursing, declared how despicable he perceived the fall of mortality to be, varying through prosperity and adversity, saying: