Moralia in Job 683

Verse 12. — 'Together His robbers have come, and have made themselves a way through me.' 46. Malignant spirits, rushing in, besiege the afflicted. In them the will is unjust, and the power just. — For His robbers are the malignant spirits, who are occupied in hunting out the deaths of men. Because they make themselves a way in the hearts of the afflicted, when amid the adverse things that are borne outwardly they do not cease also to inject depraved thoughts. Of whom it is further said: 'And they have besieged my tabernacle round about.' For they besiege the tabernacle round about when from every side they gird the mind with their temptations.

Which mind, by their most wicked suggestion, they persuade now to mourn over temporal things, now to despair of things eternal, now to rush into impatience, and to hurl words of blasphemy against God. These words, nevertheless, as we have already said before, also befit blessed Job according to the history; who, when he heaped before his eyes the evils he had suffered, judged himself to have been struck not as a son to be corrected, but as an enemy. Through whom His robbers also made themselves a way, because the malignant spirits received licence to strike against him. Whose tabernacle they besieged round about, because, his goods and children being taken away, they wore down his whole body also with wounds. But it is very wonderful: since he said 'robbers,' why did he add 'His'?

namely, that he might show these same robbers to be God's. In which matter, if the will and the power of the malignant spirits be distinguished, why they are called God's robbers is made plain. For the malignant spirits pant incessantly to harm us; but although they have a depraved will of themselves, yet they have not the power of harming unless the supreme Will permit them. And although they indeed unjustly desire to injure us, yet they are permitted by the Lord to injure anyone only justly. Because, therefore, in them the will is unjust and the power just, they are called both robbers and God's — so that from themselves is that they unjustly desire to inflict evils, and from God that they justly accomplish what they desired.

But because, as we have already often said, the holy man, set in the pain of his sufferings, uses now his own voice, now the voice of the Church, now that of our Redeemer, and for the most part so narrates his own things as nevertheless through a figure to set forth those things which belong to holy Church and to our Redeemer, let us, laying aside for a little while the history, in the things which he subjoins demonstrate how he accords with the voice of our Redeemer. There follows: