約伯倫理 第 1099 章

CHAP. XXXIV, VERSES 31, 32. — 'Since I have spoken to God, I will not prohibit thee either. If I have erred, do thou teach me; if I have spoken iniquity, I will add no more.' The mask of humility is quickly cast off. — Just as it often happens that even the wicked speak good things, Elihu remembered that he had said many strong things a little before, and therefore secure, he was inquiring whether perchance he had erred. For he would not inquire, if he had believed himself to have erred. For it is, as I said, the peculiar fraud of the arrogant that they then study to inquire about error, when they know themselves not to have erred. Who again disdain to inquire or to be reproved concerning error, if ever they truly foreknow themselves to have erred. For they desire not to be, but to seem, humble;

and they then, by inquiring, assume the appearance of humility, precisely when from that very inquiry they are the more praised. But because it is altogether difficult that the pride which reigns in the heart should not burst forth in the voice, the hearers of the arrogant, if they for a little while silently await and consider their sayings, more quickly do the words that follow make manifest those men's hearts. For they cannot tarry long in that very image of humility, which they assume only in appearance. For to proud minds humility is high, and when they aspire to climb up its form, with the wearied steps of the soul they slip down as it were from steep and rough paths. That, namely, is alien which they desire to seem, and therefore they can by no means adhere long to its image.

They reckon it a heavy burden, so long as they carry it even only in outward appearance; and until they cast it off, they suffer a kind of violence in the heart, because plainly they are enslaved to the practice of an ill-ruling pride, and by its command they are compelled to betray of what sort they really are, lest for long they be able to seem what they are not. Hence Elihu too, after he had asked to be taught concerning his error, after he had promised that he would speak iniquity no more, suddenly leapt up from the appearance of humility to words of swollen wrangling. For he added, saying: