Moralia in Job 308

1. Who was proved by scourges and revilings. If anyone speaks things that sound of impatience, these are to be pondered not by human judgment but by divine. The minds of some are tortured more by scourges than by revilings; but those of others are chastised more by revilings than by scourges. For often the torments of words rage against us more harshly than any penalties; and while they rouse us to defence, they cast us down into impatience. Hence, that no temptation might be lacking to blessed Job, not only do scourges strike him from above, but conversations more grievous than blows afflict him; that the soul of the holy man, buffeted on this side and that, might break out into a movement of anger and elation, and might defile by the obstinacy of proud speech whatever it had lived cleanly.

But being touched by blows he returned thanks; being provoked by words he answered rightly; and, being struck, he makes known how little he esteemed the safety of the flesh. In speaking too he shows how wise he was in keeping silence. But certain things are mingled with his words which seem to pass beyond the limit of patience before human judgments; things which we truly understand if we weigh in their examination the sentence of the Judge on high. For He Himself both before set blessed Job forward against the adversary, saying: 'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him upon the earth, a man simple and upright, and fearing God, and departing from evil?' (Job 1:8). He Himself after the proving rebuked his friends, saying: 'Ye have not spoken before me the thing that is right;

as my servant Job' (Job 42:7). It remains, therefore, that when the mind wavers amid the discourses of blessed Job, it should weigh their import from the beginning and end of the same history. For by the eternal Judge he who was not about to fall could not have been praised, nor could one fallen have been preferred. If therefore, caught in the tempest of ambiguity, we look upon the first and last things of this history, the ship of the heart is restrained by the ropes of its own consideration, as though by prow and stern, lest it be driven onto the rocks of error. We are overwhelmed by no storms of our ignorance, if we hold the tranquil shore of the sentence from on high. For behold, he says something that may move the reader's mind with no small question. But who would dare to say this is not right, which sounds right in the ears of God?