約伯倫理 第 103 章

Verse 16. — 'And while he was yet speaking, another came and said: The fire of God fell from heaven, and consumed the sheep and the servants, and I alone have fled to tell you.' 23. He strives to overturn Job's constancy by sudden calamities. — Lest the loss of his goods should move too little grief in the hearer, he goads his mind to excess by the very words of the messengers. For it is to be observed how craftily it is said, 'The fire of God,' as if it were said: You endure the chastisement of Him whom you wished to appease with so many sacrifices; you bear the wrath of Him whom you toiled to serve daily. For while he indicates that God, whom Job had served, had inflicted the adversity, he calls to mind the offended One, in whom Job might transgress;

in order that Job might recall to mind his former acts of homage, and, reckoning that he had served in vain, might grow proud to the injury of his Maker. For the devout mind, when it beholds itself suffering adversities from men, rests in the consolation of divine grace; and when it sees the storms of temptations increasing from without, seeking the retreat of the Lord's hope, it flees within to the harbor of conscience. But that the crafty enemy might, at one and the same time, shake the most robust breast of the holy man both by human adversities and by despair of God, he first brought word that the Sabeans had rushed in, and soon announced that the fire of God had fallen from heaven;

so that he might, as it were, shut out every avenue of consolation, by showing that the very One who could have consoled the soul amid adversities was Himself the adversary: in order that, while the tempted man considers himself forsaken on every side and pressed on every side, he might break out into blasphemy the more boldly, the more despairingly. There follows: