約伯倫理 第 1069 章

Verses 31-33. — Attend, Job, and hear me; and hold your peace while I speak. But if you have anything to say, answer me: speak, for I would have you appear righteous. But if you have not, hear me: hold your peace, and I will teach you wisdom. When men speak anything humbly, they do not long persevere in the appearance of that same humility. — What sort of person he holds himself to be in his own eyes he makes manifest by this speech, in which he says: Attend, Job, and hear me, and hold your peace while I speak. For it is an immense pride to exact reverence for oneself from an elder, and to command silence upon one better than oneself.

But because righteous preachers, while they rebuke any persons, often through the grace of humility return to the inmost recesses of their own thoughts, and in that very thing which they rebuke, lest perchance they be deceived, they search themselves out, and grant to those rebuked the liberty of confessing if they hold anything more just on their own behalf — this the arrogant too sometimes desire to imitate. For a little while, elation being set aside in words, they seek as it were the righteousness of those whom they rebuke, if perchance they might find it, not because they truly feel thus, but because they long to be adorned through the appearance of humility. For they are afraid of seeming proud and swollen — which they are. Whence Elihu at once subjoined, saying: But if you have anything to say, answer me;

speak, for I would have you appear righteous. But because he did not utter these things from the heart, he did not wait to hear what he had asked. For immediately he subjoined: But if you have not, hear me; hold your peace, and I will teach you wisdom. For those who truly seek to hear what is just wait with equanimity to hear what they ask. But Elihu, because he did not utter the words of inquiry truly, did not permit to be said what he had asked, but presently burst out with what he inwardly carried, and showed what sort of person he held himself to be in his own eyes, saying: Hold your peace, and I will teach you wisdom. For arrogant men, when they sound anything humbly, do not long endure in the appearance of that same humility.

When perchance they ask that they may hear, they presently by speaking oppose it, lest they be taught, because the intention of ostentation, which rises up from the root of the heart, more quickly stamps upon the surface of the voice which they had uttered; and that same form of humility, taken up only in appearance, they prove the more quickly to be alien, in that they cannot hold it for long. Behold, Elihu, when he asks for righteousness that he may learn, promises that he will teach. Behold, as though by asking what is just, the tongue had sounded something plain; but presently the conscience could not conceal that which swelled up on high. For suddenly he subjoined: Hold your peace, and I will teach you wisdom.

But because all arrogant men, in that which they utter, are inflated with the swelling of pride, and, as though placed on high, so assume the appearance of teachers as if their words were poured down from heaven by a certain condescension upon unworthy men, well is a verse interposed by the writer of this history, in which it is said: