Moralia in Job 242

Verse 11. — The tiger has perished because it had no prey, and the whelps of the lions are scattered. 39. The tiger, varied and rapacious, fittingly signifies hypocrites. — For whom does he mark by the name of tiger, but blessed Job, under the note of variegation, or as one sprinkled with the spots of dissimulation? For every dissembler, in that he desires to appear upright, does not show himself clean in all respects; because while he assumes certain virtues through hypocrisy, and secretly subjects himself to vices, certain hidden vices suddenly burst out into his face, and, by the admixture of the dissimulation laid over him — as it were the hide of his appearance — they show it variegated; so that for the most part it is a wonder why a man, who is seen to flourish with such great virtues, is also stained with such reprobate deeds.

But without doubt every hypocrite is a tiger, because while a clean color is drawn from dissimulation, it is variegated by the blackness of vices breaking through. For often, while he is exalted for the cleanness of chastity, he is befouled with the filth of avarice. Often, while he is shown resplendent by the virtue of generosity, he is stained with the spots of lust. Often, while he is clothed with the beauty of chastity and generosity, as if out of zeal for justice, he is darkened by the atrocity of cruelty. Often he is arrayed by the fair appearance of generosity, chastity, and piety, but is marked by an interfused obscurity of pride. And so it comes to pass that, with vices intermingled, while the hypocrite does not show in himself a clean appearance, he can by no means have, as it were, one single color of the tiger.

Which tiger, indeed, seizes prey, because it usurps to itself the glory of human favor. For he who is exalted by seized praise is, as it were, sated with prey. And rightly is the praise of hypocrites called prey. For it is prey when the things of another are violently carried off. But every hypocrite, because, simulating a life of justice, he snatches to himself the praise of the just, that which he takes away is assuredly another's. And so Eliphaz, because he had known that blessed Job did praiseworthy things in the time of his soundness, upon the ensuing blow believed that he had held these things through hypocrisy, saying: The tiger has perished because it had no prey. As if he plainly said: The variegation of your dissimulation is extinguished, because the flattery of praise too has been taken away;

and now your hypocrisy has no prey, because, smitten by God, it lacks human favors. 40. The ant-lion shadows forth those who are timid toward the stronger and bold toward the small. — But in the rendering of the Septuagint interpreters it is by no means called a tiger, but: The ant-lion has perished because it had no prey. Now the ant-lion is a very small animal, hostile to ants, which hides itself under the dust and kills the ants carrying grains, and consumes those it has killed. And the ant-lion is called in Latin either the lion of ants, or, more expressly, at once an ant and a lion.

And rightly is it named an ant and a lion, because whether to winged creatures or to any other tiny animals it is an ant, but to those same ants it is a lion. For these it devours like a lion, but by those it is devoured like an ant. When Eliphaz, therefore, says: The ant-lion has perished, what does he reprove in blessed Job under the name of the ant-lion, but timidity and boldness? As if he plainly said to him: Not unjustly are you smitten, because you were timid toward the upright and bold toward those beneath you. As if he plainly said: Toward the cunning, dread pressed you down; toward the simple, rashness puffed you up. But now the ant-lion has no prey, because your timid arrogance, while it is pressed down by blows, is kept back from harming another.

But because we have said that the friends of blessed Job bear the likeness of heretics, it necessarily presses upon us that we should intimate how these same words of Eliphaz are also to be understood in a typical sense.