Moralia in Job 254

Verse 14. — Fear seized upon me, and trembling, and all my bones were terrified. 56. The higher we contemplate God's rectitude, the more we dread concerning our own. — What is signified by the bones, if not strong deeds? Concerning which it is also said by the Prophet: The Lord keepeth all their bones (Ps. xxxiii, 21). And often the things which men do they esteem to be of some moment, because they know not how subtle is the judgment of the inmost strictness. But when, caught up through contemplation, they behold the things on high, they are in some manner melted from that very security of their own presumption; and they tremble the more in the divine sight, the more they weigh that not even their own goods are worthy of the examination of Him whom they behold.

For hence it is that he who had advanced by doing strong deeds, being lifted up by the spirit, cried out: All my bones shall say: Lord, who is like to Thee (Ps. xxxiv, 10)? As though he said: My flesh has no words, because my infirm things are utterly silent before Thee; but my bones speak the praise of Thy greatness, because even those very things which I believed to be strong in me tremble at the consideration of Thee. Hence it is that Manoah, terrified at the sight of the angel, says: We shall surely die, because we have seen the Lord (Judges xiii, 22). Whom his wife at once consoles, saying: If the Lord wished to kill us, He would not have received from our hands a holocaust and libations (Ibid., 23).

But what is it that at the vision of the angel the man becomes timid, and the woman bold, if not that, as often as heavenly things are shown to us, the spirit indeed shakes itself with dread, yet hope presumes? For hope raises itself to dare greater things from the very source whence the spirit is troubled, because it first sees the things that are on high. (Version XXIII.) Because, therefore, when the lifted-up mind beholds the loftier things of the heavenly secrets, all the solidity of human powers trembles, it is now rightly said: Fear seized upon me, and trembling, and all my bones were terrified. As though it were openly said: Perceiving the arcana of the inmost subtlety, wherein I believed myself strong within myself, I wavered before the sight of the Judge.

For contemplating the strictness of the divine justice, we justly dread even concerning those very works which we thought we had done strongly. For our rectitude, being brought to the inward rule, if it meets with a strict judgment, dashes against the inmost rectitude with many folds of its own crookedness. Hence Paul well, when he both perceived himself to have as it were the bones of virtue, and yet under a strict examination these same bones of his trembled, says: To me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by man's day. But neither do I judge my own self; for I am conscious to myself of nothing (1 Cor. iv, 3). But because, on hearing the veins of the divine whisper, these same bones of his trembled, he at once added:

But I am not thereby justified: but He that judgeth me is the Lord. As though he said: I am unwilling to have acted rightly, and yet I do not presume upon my merits, because our life is brought to His examination, under whom even the bones of our fortitude are troubled. 57. The grace of contemplation is not lasting. — But when the mind is suspended in contemplation, when, overcoming the straits of the flesh, it explores through the power of speculation something of the liberty of inward security, it cannot stand long above its own self; because, even though the spirit lifts it to the heights, yet the flesh, by the very weight of its corruption, presses it downward. Hence it is subjoined: