Moralia in Job 837

The aim of the holy Doctor: to expound the history of Job typically and unto the mystical sense. — As often as, in the History of the holy man, we set out through a new volume to unfold the mystery of a typical exposition, it behoves us that we principally set forth for it a mystical signification either from the name or from the passion of that same man; so that, after the manner of dwellings, while we fix in front, upon the very facade set there, the superscription of the title, since it is recognized whose the house is, it may be entered more securely. And I remember I have often said that blessed Job signified, both by his passion and by his name, the passions of our Redeemer, and of his body, that is, of the holy Church. For Job is interpreted 'grieving.' And who else is figured in this grieving one, but he of whom it is written:

Surely he hath borne our infirmities, and he hath carried our sorrows (Isaiah liii, 4)? Of whom again it is said: By his bruise we are healed (ibid., 5). But his friends hold the type of the heretics, who, as we have often already said, while they strive to defend God, offend him. Let the holy man, therefore, so speak by his wounds and his words, that he may signify also our own, and for the most part narrate, through the spirit of prophecy, things to come, transcending things present; but sometimes so discourse of things present, that he keeps silence of things to come. This distinction, then, being known and kept, let our understanding also alternate with the change of his voice, so that it may agree with his meanings the more truly, the more it changes itself even to his words.

And so, in the foregoing words, the holy man, through sentences skilled in the art of prudence, has brought forth the faults of any wicked man whatever, and has expressed how damnable his action is. Of whose punishment he presently subjoins, saying: