Moralia in Job 231

Same verse. — 'And my roaring is poured out like overflowing waters.' 15. What are the causes of mourning and trembling in the saints. — Waters, when they overflow, come with force; and swelling with manifoldly increasing surges, they rise up. But the elect, when they set the divine judgments before the eyes of their mind, when they tremble at the hidden sentence over themselves, when they trust that they can attain unto God, yet nonetheless fear lest they should not attain, when they recall their past deeds which they lament, when they dread the things still to come to them because they know them not — as it were certain surges after the manner of waters are gathered in them, which flow down into the roarings of grief as into the shores that lie beneath.

The holy man therefore saw how great are the surges of thoughts in the laments of penitence; and those very waves of grief he called overflowing waters, saying: 'And my roaring is poured out like overflowing waters.' [Old Version.] Sometimes indeed the just, as we said a little above, though set amid their very good works, tremble, and lest in those same works they should be displeasing through some hidden error, they give themselves to continual laments. When divine scourges suddenly seize such men, they suspect that they have offended the grace of their Author, because, whether hindered by infirmities or pressed by bitternesses, they do not rise up to render pious works to their neighbors. And the heart is turned to lamentation, because the body is held back from the service of its devotion.

And when they consider that they do not increase their reward, they even dread that their past works have been displeasing. Whence well did blessed Job, when he had called his roaring like overflowing waters, straightway add: