約伯倫理 第 1351 章

The devil, desiring to gulp down Christ, was himself caught like a man. It is greatly to be noted that God, mercifully tempering the words of His Scripture, now terrifies us with harsh incitements, now cherishes us with gentle consolations, and mingles terror with soothing remedies, and remedies with terror, so that, while both are tempered around us with the wondrous art of His teaching, we may be found neither despairingly terrified nor incautiously secure.

For when He had indicated Behemoth's crafty ambushes and unbridled powers by manifold sentences, He at once commends the coming of the Redeemer, His only-begotten Son, and intimates by what plan this Behemoth is to be destroyed by Him; so that, because He had struck our heart by recounting his power, He might the sooner relieve our sorrow by making known his destruction. Therefore, after He had said: 'He shall swallow up the river, and shall not wonder, and he hath confidence that the Jordan may flow into his mouth,' He at once announces the very coming of the Lord's incarnation, saying: 'In his eyes he shall catch him as it were a man.' Who knows not that in a hook the bait is shown, the barb is hidden? For the bait provokes, that the barb may prick.

Our Lord, therefore, coming for the redemption of the human race, made as it were a kind of hook of Himself for the slaying of the devil. For He assumed a body, that in it this Behemoth might, as though after his prey, crave the death of the flesh. And while he unjustly craves that death in Him, he lost us whom he as though justly held. On the hook, then, of His incarnation was he caught, because while in Him he craved the bait of the body, he was transfixed by the barb of the Godhead. There, indeed, was present a humanity which might draw the devourer to itself; there a Godhead which might pierce through; there an open weakness which might provoke; there a hidden power which might transfix the throat of the ravisher. On the hook, therefore, was he caught, because thence he perished whence he had devoured.

And indeed this Behemoth knew that the Son of God was incarnate, but he did not know the plan of our redemption. For he knew that the Son of God had become incarnate for our redemption, but he was wholly ignorant that this same Redeemer of ours would pierce him through by dying. Whence it is well said: 'Before his eyes, as with a hook, he shall take him' (cf. Job 40:19). For we are said to have before our eyes that which we see set plainly in front of us. Now the ancient enemy of the human race saw the Redeemer set before him, whom, by knowing, he confessed, and by confessing, he feared, saying: 'What have we to do with thee, Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?' (Matt. 8:29). And so he was caught by the hook before his own eyes, because he both knew Him and bit Him;

and it recognized beforehand the one it was to fear, and yet afterward it did not fear, when it hungered for Him as its own food, namely the death of the flesh. [Old translation, ch. 11.] Therefore, since we have heard what our Head did by Himself, let us now hear what He does through His members. There follows: