Moralia in Job 670

Verse 21. — 'These, then, are the tabernacles of the wicked man, and this is the place of him who knows not God.' 28. The place of Antichrist is darkness, into which he shall be thrust down together with all the wicked. — For above he had said: 'He shall drive him out of light into darkness, and shall remove him from the world.' And when he was subjoining his evils, he added: 'These are the tabernacles of the wicked man, and this is the place of him who knows not God' — indicating, namely, that he who now is exalted by not knowing God, then arrives at his own tabernacles, when his iniquity plunges him into torments; and he finds as his place at last the darkness, he who, while here he rejoiced in the false light of righteousness, held another's place.

For the perverse strive, in everything they do through pretence, to occupy, as it were, another's place — the name of the glory of the just. But they arrive at their own place then, when by the desert of their iniquity they are tortured with perpetual fire. For here, through everything they do, they serve the desire of the praise to be received, and through an image of good works they stretch out the bosom of the mind to avarice. Let the wicked man, then, go now, and, swollen with much display, let him here build his dwellings, extend the name of glory, multiply his estates, and delight himself with abundant riches; but when he shall have arrived at eternal torments, he will assuredly know that 'these are the tabernacles of the wicked man, and this is the place of him who knows not God.'

Baldad had indeed said these things rightly, but he knew not to whom he was speaking. But the heart of the just man is grievously afflicted when, out of an unjust estimation, sentences are pronounced against him. Whence blessed Job immediately answered, saying: