約伯倫理 第 73 章

The same. — 'And they sent and called their three sisters, that they might eat and drink with them.' 29. These are signified by the daughters of Job. Holy Scripture is now food, now drink. — The sons call the sisters to the feast: because to the weak hearers the holy apostles preach the joys of supernal refreshment, and they feed with the banquets of the divine word those minds which they behold to be fasting from the fodder of truth. Now it is well said: 'That they might eat and drink with them.' For Holy Scripture is to us sometimes food, sometimes drink. It is food in the more obscure places, because it is as it were broken by being expounded, and swallowed by being chewed. But it is drink in the more open places, because it is imbibed just as it is found.

The prophet saw Holy Scripture as food, which should be broken by being expounded, when he said: 'The little ones asked bread, and there was none to break it unto them' (Lam. iv, 4): that is, all the weak sought the stronger sentences of Holy Scripture to be broken small by expounding; but he who ought to expound cannot be found. The prophet saw Scripture as drink, when he said: 'All ye that thirst, come to the waters' (Isa. lv, 1). If the open commandments were not drink, Truth would not through itself cry out: 'If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink' (John vii, 37). As it were both food and drink the prophet saw to be lacking to Judaea, when he said: 'Her nobles perished with hunger, and her multitude was dried up with thirst' (Isa. v, 12).

For it belongs to few to know the strong and hidden things; but to many, to perceive the open things of the history. And therefore he asserts that the nobles of Judaea perished not with thirst, but with hunger; because those who seemed to be in charge, while they gave themselves wholly to the outward understanding, had not what they might chew by discussing the inmost things. But because, when the more sublime fall from the inner understanding, the intelligence of the little ones is dried up even in outward things, rightly is it there added: 'Her multitude was dried up with thirst.' As if he plainly said: while the common folk desert the zeal of their life, they no longer seek even the streams of the history. And that they had understood both the hidden and the open commandments of the sacred word, they testify, who, complaining to the Judge who reproves them, say:

'We have eaten and drunk in thy presence' (Luke xiii, 26). Which, plainly expounding, they subjoin: 'And thou hast taught in our streets' (ibid.). Because therefore the sacred words are broken by expounding in the more obscure places, but in the more open places are drunk just as they were found, let it be rightly said: 'They sent and called their three sisters, that they might eat and drink with them.' As if it were plainly said: by gentle persuasion they drew all the weak to themselves, so that they might both feed their minds by discoursing great things through contemplation, and nourish them by delivering small things through the history. There follows: