約伯倫理 第 440 章

Verses 4-7. — 'Hast Thou eyes of flesh, or wilt Thou see as man seeth? Are Thy days as the days of man, or Thy years as human times, that Thou shouldst inquire after my iniquity, and search out my sin? And Thou knowest that I have done nothing impious.' 72. The difference between human and divine sight, between our days and eternity. — Eyes of flesh know the deeds of time only within time, because they too come forth to seeing together with time, and are closed together with time; and human sight follows some work, it does not run before it, because it scarcely beholds what exists, and in no wise knows things to come.

The days too and years of man differ from the days and years of eternity, because our life is begun and ended in time; while eternity, within the breadth of its own bosom, gives it form, it also devours it. The immensity of that eternity, because it stretches above and beyond and beneath us, is extended to be eternal, without beginning and without end; and to it neither do things past pass away, nor are things yet to come lacking as though they did not appear, because He who ever possesses being beholds all things present to Himself; and since in beholding He is not stretched out to before and after, He is varied by no change of gaze. Let him say, then: 'Hast Thou eyes of flesh, or wilt Thou see as man seeth?'

'Are Thy days as the days of man, and Thy years as human times, that Thou shouldst inquire after my iniquity, and search out my sin? And Thou knowest that I have done nothing impious.' As if, humbly asking, he said: Why dost Thou in time examine me by scourges, whom Thou hast perfectly known before Thee even before the times? Why dost Thou interrogate my faults with stripes, whom, through the power of Thy eternity, Thou dost not fail to know even before Thou didst create me? And of that power he straightway expresses the weight, when he subjoins: