約伯倫理 第 98 章

Verses 9, 10. — Doth Job fear God in vain? Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and his house, and all his substance round about? Thou hast blessed the works of his hands, and his possession hath increased in the land. 15. He tempts by prosperity and by adversity. — As if he openly said: He who has received so many good things in the land, what wonder is it if he bears himself innocently for their sake? He would truly be innocent, if he persisted good amid adversities. But why is he called great, whom the reward of each of his works accompanies with so great a multiplicity of things? For the cunning adversary, when he considers that the holy man has done well amid prosperity, hastens to reprobate him before the Judge through adversity. Whence rightly in the Apocalypse it is said by the angelic voice:

The accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before the sight of our God day and night (Rev. xii. 10). But sacred Scripture is often wont to put day for prosperity, and night for adversity. By day, therefore, and by night he ceases not to accuse, because now he strives to represent us as accusable in prosperity, now in adversity. By day he accuses, when he intimates that we use prosperity ill. By night he accuses, when he shows that we have not patience in adversities. Blessed Job, then, since the scourges had not yet touched him, had as it were nothing at all whence he might yet accuse him in the night. But since he had flourished with great sanctity in prosperity, he pretended that Job had done good things for the sake of those same prosperous things:

lying with crafty assertion that Job possessed his substance not for the use of the Lord, but worshipped the Lord for the use of his substance. For there are some who, in order that they may enjoy God, use this world by way of stewardship. And there are some who, in order that they may enjoy this world, are willing to use God transitorily. When, therefore, he narrates the good things of the divine gift, he thinks that he may make light of the deeds of the strong workman; so that of him whose life he cannot reprehend by works, he may condemn the mind, as it were, out of his thoughts; lying that all which he lived innocently outwardly served not the love of the Lord, but the appetite of temporal prosperity. Not knowing, therefore, the strength of blessed Job, but yet knowing more truly that each one is proved by adversities, he seeks him to be tempted;

so that he who by the day of prosperity had walked with unstumbling step, might at least in the night of adversity stumble, and lie prostrate before the eyes of his own praiser, cast down by the offence of impatience. Whence he subjoins: