Moralia in Job 406

Verse 8: Who alone stretches out the heavens. 10. God permitted the Gospel to be repelled by the Jews, that it might be diffused among all the nations. For what is designated by the name of the heavens but this same heavenly life of the preachers? Of whom it is said through the Psalmist: The heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 18:1). These same, therefore, are said to be heavens, and the same to be the sun; heavens, forsooth, because by interceding they protect; but the sun, because by preaching they show forth the force of light. When the earth was shaken, therefore, the heavens were stretched out, because when Judaea raged into the force of persecution, the Lord spread abroad the life of the apostles into the knowledge of all nations; and while she is scattered captive throughout the world by judgment, these are extended everywhere in honor through grace.

For the heavens had been narrow, when one people held so many excellent preachers. For what Gentile would have known Peter, if he had remained in the preaching of the Israelite people alone? Who would have recognized the virtues of Paul, unless Judaea, by persecuting him, had transmitted him to our knowledge? Behold, now those who were driven out by the Israelite people with scourges and insults are honored throughout the ends of the world. The Lord alone, therefore, stretched out the heavens, who, by the wondrous dispensation of His secret counsel, permitted His preachers to be oppressed within one nation, and thence caused them to be spread abroad into the corners of the world. But neither did this same Gentile world, given over to the present world, willingly receive the words of life, when the tongue of the apostles rebuked its faults.

For straightway it swelled up into the pride of contradiction, and roused itself to the cruelty of persecution. But that which strives to oppose the words of preaching is more quickly tempered by admiration of the signs. Whence also it is aptly subjoined in praise of the Author: