Moralia in Job 593

Verse 32.—Before his days be fulfilled he shall perish, and his hands shall wither. 58. The days appointed to each cannot be increased nor diminished. He who hopes for longer days perishes before they are fulfilled.—The days appointed to each by the inner foreknowledge of God can neither be increased nor diminished, unless it happen that they are so foreknown as to be either longer with the best works, or shorter with the worst—just as Hezekiah merited an increase of days by the shedding of tears; and just as it is written of the perverse: Upon the undisciplined death rushes. But often the wicked man, although in the hidden foreknowledge of God long times of life are not predestined for him, nevertheless, because he desires to live carnally, sets before himself days with a long-reaching mind.

And because he is not able to arrive at that time which he awaits, he perishes, as it were, before his days are fulfilled. This, however, we can understand also in another way. For very often we behold certain men both acting perversely and arriving even at extreme old age. How, then, is it said: Before his days be fulfilled he shall perish, when in certain men we often see that, with a long lifetime, the limbs are already failing, and yet their desires do not cease to pursue their depravity? 59. Seeking again outward things after his conversion, he is uprooted from every state of good work.

—For there are some who, after a lost life, return to themselves, and, their conscience accusing them, forsake their perverse paths, change their works, contradict their former depravity, flee earthly actions, and pursue heavenly desires; but before they are made solid in those same holy desires, through the torpor of the mind they return to those things which they had begun to condemn, and run back to the evils which they had resolved to flee. For because it often happens that even holy men, for the benefit of many, serve outward affairs and are occupied with the governance of peoples, the weak, beholding this, and still through their old pride seeking to imitate them, insert themselves into outward actions;

but the less trained they come to them in spiritual things, the more carnally do they carry them out. For unless the heart first grow strong by long study and continual practice in heavenly desires, when it is poured back to the doing of outward things, it is uprooted from every state of good work. Whence rightly also of this wicked man it is said: Before his days be fulfilled he shall perish. Because even if he perhaps begins to do some good, before he grows strong in it through length of time, he slips back to outward things, and perversely forsakes what he seemed to have rightly begun. Whence it is also fittingly subjoined: And his hands shall wither. Because while he is unseasonably involved in outward acts, he is doubtless dried up from every good operation. Whence it is still well subjoined: