約伯倫理 第 323 章

Verses 8-10. Who will grant that my petition may come, and that the Lord may give me what I look for; and that He who has begun may crush me utterly; let Him loose His hand and cut me down; and let this be my consolation, that afflicting me with pain, He spare not? 19. The example of Job blessing his own smiter. God crushes us, the devil also crushes, but with different outcomes. — But perhaps he seeks these things out of contumacy; perhaps in the fact that he desires to be perfectly extinguished, he accuses the injustice of the one striking. Far be this. For with what mind he asks this, he demonstrates by the following words, saying: Nor will I contradict the words of the Holy One. By no means, therefore, does he murmur at the injustice of the one striking, who calls his smiter, even amid the blows, holy.

But it must be known that sometimes the adversary crushes us, and sometimes God crushes us. Now from the crushing of the adversary we fail from virtue; but broken by the crushing of the Lord, we are strengthened in virtue against vices. This crushing the Prophet had foreseen, when he said: You shall rule them with a rod of iron, and shall crush them like a potter's vessel (Ps. ii, 9). With a rod of iron the Lord rules and crushes us, because by the strong rectitude of His dispensation, while He inwardly refreshes us, He outwardly afflicts us. For in the measure that He humbles the strength of the flesh, He exalts the intention of the spirit. Whence this same crushing is also compared to a potter's vessel, as it is likewise said by Paul: We have this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor. iv, 7).

Who, at once expressing both the crushing and the governance, says: Though our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed day by day (Ibid., 16). [Old Version VIII.] The holy man, therefore, who desires to draw near to God even through scourges, let him say through the spirit of humility: