約伯倫理 第 202 章

Verse 5.— Let darkness and the shadow of death obscure it. 29. The hidden judgments of God are a certain darkness.— Truly, darkness obscures the day when the inflicted laments of penance pierce through the delight of the mind. Also, by darkness the hidden judgments can be signified. For in the light we recognize what we see; but in darkness we either discern nothing at all, or are dim of uncertain sight. The hidden judgments, therefore, are as it were a certain darkness before our eyes, because they can by no means be scrutinized. Whence also it is written of God: 'He made darkness His hiding-place' (Psalm 17:12). And since we do not deserve to be absolved, we acknowledge it; but by the divine grace preventing us, we are freed through His hidden judgments.

Darkness therefore obscures the day when His unfathomable judgments mercifully hide, from that ray of righteous animadversion, the joy of our delight which must be bewept. Wherein it is also fitly subjoined: 'And the shadow of death.' 30. The shadow of death is understood in the Scriptures in a threefold way.— For in Holy Scripture the shadow of death is sometimes understood as the forgetfulness of the mind, sometimes as the imitation of the devil, sometimes as the death of the flesh. For the shadow of death is understood as the forgetfulness of the mind; because, as we said above, just as death, that which it slays, brings it about that it be not in life, so also forgetfulness, that which it cuts off, brings it about that it be not in memory.

Whence also rightly, since John was coming to preach to the people of the Hebrews the God whom they had forgotten, it is said through Zacharias: 'To enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death' (Luke 1:79). For to sit in the shadow of death is to grow faint in forgetfulness away from the knowledge of divine love. The shadow of death is understood as the imitation of the ancient enemy. For he himself, because he brought in death, is called death, John testifying, who says: 'And his name was Death' (Revelation 6:8). By the shadow of death, therefore, his imitation is signified; because just as a shadow is drawn according to the quality of the body, so the actions of the wicked are expressed from the likeness of his imitation.

Whence rightly Isaiah, when he perceived the gentile peoples to have fallen away in the imitation of the ancient enemy, and to rise again to the rising of the true sun—which he considers as certainly to come, and narrates it as if from things past—saying: 'To them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, a light is risen' (Isaiah 9:2). Also the shadow of death is understood as the death of the flesh; because just as it is true death by which the soul is separated from God, so it is the shadow of death by which the flesh is separated from the soul. Whence rightly it is said in the voice of the martyrs through the Prophet: 'You have humbled us in the place of affliction, and the shadow of death has covered us' (Psalm 43:20 [44:19]). For those who it is agreed die not in spirit, but in flesh alone, say that they are covered by no means with true death, but with the shadow of death. 31.

Christ by one death destroyed the twofold death of men.— What is it, then, that blessed Job, for the obscuring of the day of depraved delight, asks for the shadow of death; except that, for the blotting out of sins before the eyes of God, he seeks the Mediator of God and men, who might take upon Himself for us the death of the flesh alone, and might destroy the true death of transgressors through the shadow of His own death? For He came to us, who were held in the death of both spirit and flesh; He brought to us His one death, and loosed our two which He found. For if He Himself had taken both upon Himself, He would have freed us from neither. But mercifully He accepted one, and justly He condemned both. His single death He set against our double, and dying He subdued our double.

Whence also not without merit He lay one day and two nights in the sepulchre, because, namely, He joined the light of His single death to the darkness of our double death. He, therefore, who accepted for us the death of the flesh alone, bore the shadow of death, and hid from the eyes of God the fault which we committed. Let it therefore rightly be said: 'Let darkness and the shadow of death obscure it.' As if it were plainly said: Let Him come who, that He may rescue us who are debtors from the death of flesh and spirit, may pay the death of the flesh which He does not owe. But since the Lord releases no sin unavenged, either we ourselves pursue it by weeping, or He Himself by judging, it remains that the mind should ever watch skillfully for its own amendment.

In whatsoever, therefore, each one considers that mercy is being brought to his aid, this it is necessary that, confessing, he wipe away. Whence it is also subjoined before: