約伯倫理 第 464 章

Verse 5.—'And would that God would speak with thee, and open his lips to thee!' 5. When God speaks to a man, when a man speaks to himself.—For a man speaks to himself, when by that which he perceives he is in no wise separated by the Spirit of Divinity from the understanding of carnal prudence; when the flesh puts forth its sense, and, as if provoking to intelligence, sends the mind abroad. Whence also to Peter, still savouring earthly things, Truth says: 'For thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men' (Mark viii, 33). Yet to him confessing rightly it is said: 'Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven' (Matthew xvi, 17). But what do we take the lips of God to be but His judgments?

For with lips closed the voice is pressed back, and the sense of the one keeping silence is unknown; but when speech is brought forth openly, the mind of the speaker is found. His lips, therefore, God opens when He shows His will to men through open judgments. For He speaks as it were with mouth unbarred, when, the obscurity removed, He refuses to hide the disposition of His inmost purpose which He wills. For as if with lips closed, He does not indicate His sense to us, when through hidden judgments He conceals why He does anything. And so Sophar, that he may refute blessed Job for his carnal understanding, and may show of how great benignity he himself is, wishes for him good things, which even when they are possessed he is ignorant of, saying: 'And would that God would speak with thee, and open his lips to thee!' As if he plainly said:

I have compassion on thy ignorance rather than on thy punishment, because I recognize thee, endowed with the prudence of the flesh alone, to be empty of the spirit of truth. For if thou didst know the hidden judgments of God, thou wouldst not sound sentences so insolent against Him. And because Almighty God, when He lifts us up to consider His judgments, straightway puts to flight the blindness of our ignorance, that, His lips being opened, instruction may come forth to us, he straightway shows this by adjoining, saying: