約伯倫理 第 273 章

Same verse. 'And the thirsty shall drink up his riches.' 6. The oracles of God are both harvest and riches. How they are said both to be eaten and drunk. The thirsty drink up the riches of this fool, because the converted minds of the Gentiles are watered by the streams of sacred discourse, which the Jewish people had possessed in the ostentation of pride. Hence it is also said to those same ones through the prophet: 'All ye that thirst, come to the waters; and ye that have no silver, make haste' (Isaiah lv, 1). For that the divine oracles are signified by the word 'silver,' the Psalmist attests, saying: 'The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in the fire' (Psalm xi, 7).

They therefore who have no silver are called to the waters, because assuredly the Gentiles, who had not received the precepts of Holy Scripture, are satisfied by the flood of the sacred oracle, which they now drink the more eagerly, the longer, dry, they had thirsted for it. These same divine oracles, then, are called both harvests and riches: harvests, because they refresh the fasting mind; riches, because they compose us with a great comeliness of morals. The same are said both to be eaten and drunk, because assuredly, while some things in them are obscure, which we understand only when interpreted, these we as it were swallow by chewing; but while some things are so easy to understand that we take them just as we find them, these we as it were drink unchewed, because we sup them down unbroken.

These things we run through in brief discourse under the mystical understanding, lest perhaps we should seem to have passed over anything. But because they could not be the friends of blessed Job, unless in certain respects also they shone with great uprightness of morals, it remains that we inquire morally into the virtue of the senses in their words, so that, while the weight of their discourse is examined, it may be shown of what doctrine they were. Verse 3. 'I have seen the fool with a firm root, and I cursed his beauty forthwith.' The moral sense. 7. Those who follow after earthly things seem, in prosperity, to have a firm root. As if with a firm root the fool is fixed in the earth, because with all his desires he is made solid in earthly love. Hence also Cain first is described as having built a city on the earth (Genesis

iv, 17), so that it might openly be shown that he laid his foundation on the earth, who was a stranger to the solidity of the heavenly country. As if with a firm root the fool is exalted, when here he is propped up by temporal prosperity; so that he attains all that he desires, endures no adversities, prevails without resistance against the weak, contradicts by authority those who do well, ever comes through to greater advantages by worse action, so that whence he forsakes the way of life, thence he lives for a time the more happily. But when the weak behold the wicked flourishing, they tremble; and troubled within themselves by the prosperity of sinners, they waver inwardly in the steps of the mind. Their likeness, indeed, the Psalmist took upon himself when he said:

'But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped; because I was envious at the sinners, seeing the peace of sinners' (Psalm lxxii, 2). 8. The prudent despise their glory. Nor do they defer to condemn it. But when the strong behold their glory, they at once attend to what punishment follows after glory; and by a lofty inward consideration they despise this, that the proud swell outwardly with the pomp of empty inflation. Well therefore is it said: 'I have seen the fool with a firm root, and I cursed his beauty forthwith.' For to curse the beauty of the fool is to judge his glory from the consideration of his damnation, because he is the more atrociously overwhelmed in torments, the higher he is lifted up in sins;

because what is exalted passes away, and what is punished endures; because he who is honored on the way shall be condemned at the journey's end; and he as it were arrives at prison through pleasant meadows, who through the prosperity of the present life tends toward destruction. But it is to be noted that, when he had said he cursed the beauty of the fool, he at once added, 'forthwith.' For it is the custom of the human and infirm mind that it is varied according to the quality of the dear things which it regards. For often its judgment is led by the very appearance of the present thing, and according to what it beholds, its intention and sense are formed.

For very often some, while they behold the glory of certain men, are delighted by the sight of that glory, and esteem it as something great, and long that they themselves might deserve such things. But when they behold the glorious suddenly cast down, or perhaps even dying, then, because human glory is in every way nothing, they confess it with a groan, so that they at once say: 'Behold how man is nothing.' They would indeed say this more rightly if, when they beheld a man in his glory, they then, considering his destruction, perceived his passing power to be nothing. For then, indeed, is human elation to be weighed as to how it is nothing, when it exalts itself above others in its successes.

Then is it to be considered with what swift course felicity flies away, when before human eyes it as it were prevails as though enduring. For any of the weak can weigh, in death itself, that the glory of the dying is nothing. For then even those disparage it to him, who love this glory and follow it even unto death. Well therefore is it said: 'I have seen the fool with a firm root, and I cursed his beauty forthwith.' As if he plainly said: Against the beauty of the fool I had no delay in cursing, because when I beheld it, I saw at the same time also the punishment following. For I would not curse forthwith, if any delight of his glory had held me; but without tarrying I cursed, because, beholding the punishments that were to remain, I reproved his power without doubting.

But because all the wicked, the more they advance in this world, draw the more with them to destruction, it is rightly subjoined: 'Let his children be far from safety.' For the children of the fool are those who are born in the ambition of this world through imitation of him; who assuredly are made the further from salvation, the more they are struck by no infirmity in the perpetration of wickedness. Of whom it is well added: