Moralia in Job 46

11. Job's patience in adversities. — Enemies take pains, when they come against the front, to send others out from an ambush, who may the more freely strike the side of the fighter, in that he who fights gazes more intently at the enemies coming against his front. [Rev. V.] So Job, caught in the war of this contest, received the losses as it were as enemies against his front; he endured the words of those consoling as it were enemies from the side: but in all these things, wheeling round the shield of his gravity, he stood everywhere fortified, everywhere vigilantly meeting the swords that came; he silently despises his lost substance, he with equanimity grieves for the flesh dead in his sons, he patiently bears the flesh smitten in himself, he wisely teaches the flesh evilly counselling in his wife.

Over and above these, his friends leap forth into harsh reproof; and coming to allay his grief, they add to the force of his grief. All the engines of temptations, therefore, are turned for the holy man into increases of virtues. For by the wounds his patience is proved; by the words his wisdom is exercised. Everywhere he meets them bravely, because he overcame both the scourges by strength and the words by reason. But his friends, who indeed come for consolation but go so far as words of rebuke, are to be believed to have offended by ignorance rather than by malice. For it is not to be believed that so great a man had wicked friends: but while they cannot discern the cause of the scourges, they fall into fault. [Old IX.] 12. The various kinds of chastisements.

— For the kinds of chastisements are diverse. For there is one chastisement by which the sinner is struck, that he may be punished without reprieve; another, by which the sinner is struck, that he may be corrected; another, by which sometimes one is struck, not that he may correct past deeds, but that he may not commit future ones; another by which very often one is struck, through which neither past fault is corrected nor future prevented; but so that, while unlooked-for deliverance follows the striking, the power of the Deliverer, once known, may be loved the more ardently; and while the innocent is worn down by the scourge, the sum of merits may be heaped up for him through patience. For sometimes the sinner is struck, that he may be punished without reprieve, as is said to Judaea about to perish:

'I have struck thee with the wound of an enemy, with cruel chastisement' (Jeremiah 30:14). And again: 'Why criest thou over thy affliction? Thy sorrow is incurable' (Ibid., 15). Sometimes the sinner is struck, that he may be corrected, as is said to a certain man in the Gospel: 'Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest some worse thing befall thee' (John 5:14). For the words of the Deliverer indicate that preceding sins demanded the force of the sorrow endured. Sometimes one is struck not for past fault to be washed away, but for future fault to be avoided; which the apostle Paul plainly testifies concerning himself, saying: 'Lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me' (2 Corinthians 12:7).

For he who says not 'because it exalted me' but 'lest it exalt me,' plainly indicates that by that striking the fault is restrained lest it happen, not that a fault which has happened is purged. But sometimes one is struck neither for past nor for future iniquity; but that the power of divine virtue alone may be shown from the removal of the striking. Whence, when it was said to the Lord in the Gospel concerning the man born blind: 'Did this man sin, or his parents, that he should be born blind?' (John 9:2), the Lord answered, saying: 'Neither did this man sin, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest' (Ibid., 3). In which manifestation what is wrought, but that from the scourge the virtue of merits may be increased;

and, while no past iniquity is wiped away, a great fortitude of patience may be brought forth? Whence the same blessed Job is put forward first by the voice of the judge, and afterwards committed to the hand of the tempter; and when God, after the scourge, more familiarly addresses him in rewarding him, it is plainly shown how much he grew from the beating. The friends of blessed Job, therefore, while they know not how to distinguish the kinds of chastisements, believed him to have been struck for a fault: and while they attempt to assert God to be just in his striking, they were compelled to reprove blessed Job for injustice; not knowing, namely, that he had been scourged for this reason, that from his scourging the praise of divine glory might grow, and not that through the scourges he might amend sins which he had in no way committed.

Whence they also more quickly return to pardon, because they sinned by ignorance rather than by malice. Their pride divine justice therefore humbles so vehemently, in that it in no way restores them to its grace except through the very man whom they had despised. For a mind greatly puffed up is beaten down, if it is subjected to the very one over whom it had exalted itself.