約伯倫理 第 185 章

Job's imprecations cannot be understood according to the letter without absurdity. — For behold, blessed Job is described as having cursed his own day, saying: 'Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, A man is conceived' (Job 3:3). If this is regarded only on the surface, what is found in these words more blameworthy? For who does not know that the day on which he was born could by no means then still be standing? For it is the very nature of time that it has no fixed abiding. Because it presses through things to come toward being, it ever hastens from things past into non-being. Why then should so great a man curse a thing which he could not be ignorant in no way subsists?

But perhaps someone may say that the weight of his virtue is seen precisely in this, that, moved by tribulation, he inflicts a curse upon that thing which is agreed to have no subsistence at all. But sound reason quickly overthrows this; for if the thing he cursed did subsist, he uttered a pernicious curse; but if it did not subsist, an idle one. And whoever is full of that Spirit who says: 'Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment' (Matt. 12:36), dreads to admit idle words as much as pernicious ones. To which sentence is further joined: 'Let that day be turned into darkness, let not God regard it from above, and let it not be in remembrance, nor let it be illumined with light':

'let darkness and the shadow of death cover it, let a mist seize it, and let it be wrapped in bitterness. Let a dark whirlwind possess that night, let that night be solitary and not worthy of praise; let it look for light and not see it, nor the rising of the growing dawn' (Job 3:5-9). A day which is known to have slipped away in the course of time — why is it said to be turned into darkness? And when it is agreed that it does not subsist, why is it wished that the shadow of death should darken it; or what mist seizes it, what entanglement of bitterness enwraps it; or who possesses with a dark whirlwind a night which no state holds? Or how is it wished to become solitary, which by passing away had already become nothing? Or how does it look for light, which both lacks perception and does not remain in its own state?

To these words he still further adds: