約伯倫理 第 155 章

There. In all these things Job did not sin with his lips (Job 2:10). Job did not sin with his lips, because he neither spoke unjust things, nor kept silent about just things. In two ways we offend with our lips: when we either speak unjust things, or keep silent about just things. For if to be silent were sometimes no fault, the prophet would not say: 'Woe is me, because I have kept silent' (Isa. 6:5). Blessed Job, therefore, in all that he did, in no way sinned with his lips, because he neither spoke proud things against the One who struck him, nor kept silent about right things against the one who persuaded him. He therefore offended neither by speaking nor by keeping silent, who both rendered thanks to the Father who scourged him, and ministered the wisdom of doctrine to the wife who evilly persuaded him.

For because he knew what he owed to God and what to his neighbor—namely, patience to his Creator, wisdom to his wife—he therefore both taught the latter by rebuking her, and praised the former by giving thanks. But which of us, if he received any single wound of so great a smiting, would not straightway lie prostrate from his inmost parts? Behold, laid low outwardly by the wounds of the flesh, he remains erect inwardly by the defense of the mind; and he beholds every javelin fly over beneath himself, which the raging enemy, with unsparing hand, fixes outwardly in him; watchfully he detects the darts, now hurled against him in wounds from the front, now in words as it were from the side.

And our warrior, caught in the fervor of the surrounding combats, on every side opposes the shield of his patience; he meets the spears coming from all directions, and through all the flanks of the virtues wheels his watchful mind against the assaulting wounds. He is tempted through his friends. But the ancient enemy, the more mightily he is conquered, the more ardently is he still incited to snares. For because the wife who rebuked him kept silent, he straightway aroused others who might rise up to insults with rebukings. For just as he strove more frequently to strike by announcing the losses of goods, so now he labors to penetrate the sturdy breast by more often striking it with the insults of words. There follows: