Moralia in Job 714

Verse 11. — 'His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth, and they shall sleep with him in the dust.' — Vices never forsake hypocrites. — The origin of an evil beginning multiplies the occasions of guilt even by presuming upon them. For when anyone has begun to do evil, by habit he now grows worse in that very thing which he had begun. What therefore is the 'youth' of this hypocrite but the beginning of his depravity? For in youth lust already begins to grow hot. And the hypocrite has his youth when he begins to crave and embrace the lust of glory. While the alluring flatteries of his flatterers multiply this in him, they render it stronger, and as it were turn it into bones. For that which he began wickedly, he strengthens daily worse by habit.

Let it therefore be said: 'His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth,' because the hard habits of depravities in him have been taken up from the vice of a most wicked beginning. Whence it is written in Proverbs: 'A young man according to his way, even when he is old, will not depart from it' (Proverbs xxii. 6). And these bones shall assuredly sleep with him in the dust, because iniquitous habits endure in him even to that point at which they drag him down to the dust of death. For 'to sleep with him in the dust' — that the bones, or vices, do — is not to forsake him until the dust, that is, not to cease at all from iniquity until death. Therefore his depraved habits, which once began, hold him fast, and become daily harder.

And they sleep with him in the dust, because they end only with his life. But these things can also be understood otherwise. [Old Version.] — Hypocrites, feigning to have many things which they do not have, lose even the things which they do have. — For the hypocrite sometimes has something strong and valid in his working; but while he feigns to have many good things which he does not have, he loses even those which he has. Whence it is now well said: 'His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth,' because, being fickle in a frivolous manner and doing many things childishly, he grows soft in vice even in those things which he had done stoutly.

And these his bones shall sleep with him in the dust, because, just as all that dissimulation which he practices is but dust, so also in him, if he has anything valid, it is emptied of all solidity, so that through the arrogance of virtue he loses even that which could have been of virtue in him. Therefore 'for the bones to sleep with him in the dust' is that, together with his depraved acts, even any things well done should perish. There follows: