On the Complaints of Job and David 1.1–1.29

Divine Scripture shows in many places that we must undergo many disturbances in this life, and that many consolations are at hand, by which a mind capable of vigor and conscious of what is right ought to swallow up the troubles of the present and look to the things that hold lasting delight. For the consolations outweigh the disturbances, because they bring both calm in the present and hope of the future. Hence the apostle Paul too says: “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come”: not worthy, that is, in comparison with the consolation, not in respect of the fruit of redemption.

For whose life on earth is so illustrious that it could equal that heavenly glory? What is more sublime than Paul, who underwent so many dangers and swallowed so much pain and weakness? In the sufferings he underwent for the name of Christ he died daily, as he himself says, and he judged that he suffered nothing unworthy in this time compared with the hope and expectation of so great a glory. Elijah endured famine, plots, the terrors of death, the bitterness of labors; and yet he alone, brought down from heaven to earth by fiery chariots and fiery horses and carried back from earth to heaven, hid every merit of this warfare and raised the grace of the devout ascender beyond all things human. And what shall I say of Peter? Judging his cross unworthy of the reward to come, he asked to be hung with his feet upward, so as to add something to his suffering, and he was not afraid to heap up its torments for himself.

Not without reason, then, did holy David testify, in the rest of his work but especially in the forty-first psalm, that he was hastening to that glory, saying: “When shall I come and appear before the face of God?” In that psalm he clearly expressed both the disturbances of human frailty and the consolations from the Lord. In it he also remonstrates with God on our behalf, that, forgetful of his work, forgetful of the generosity and grace bestowed on man, he has forsaken the one he had undertaken to protect and adorn, and has cast him off, weak and shipwrecked, to be worn down by various infirmities. Holy Job had done the same before him, but David more temperately, Job more vehemently. It is my intention, then, to consider the remonstrances of both, because in them the form of human life is expressed, its case is pleaded, its prerogative shaped. So we must look at them in their order.

So Job, having lost his children and all his possessions except his wife, who alone had been kept to tempt him, and covered besides with a grievous ulcer, when he saw that his friends had come not to console but to aggravate and heap up his pain, perceived that the adversary had been given power by the Lord to tempt him. And although he felt the arrows of the Lord in his body, by which he said he was pierced, yet like a good athlete who would not yield to pain or refuse the hardships of the contest, he added: “Let the Lord begin and wound me, but in the end let him not destroy me. For what is my strength, that I endure? Or what is my time, that my soul should bear it? Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh of bronze? Or did I not trust in him? But help has departed from me, and his visitation has despised me.”

“Is not man’s life on earth a trial, and his life like that of a daily hireling, or like a servant fearing his master, who hides himself under a shadow, or like a hireling awaiting his wages? So I too have waited empty months, and nights of pains have been given me. If I lie down, I say: When will it be day? If I rise, again: When will it be evening? I am full of pains from evening until morning. My body ferments in the rottenness of worms; I dissolve clods of earth, scraping the pus of my sores. My life is lighter than a tale; it perishes in empty hope. I will say: My bed will comfort me. You terrify me in dreams and strike me down in visions.”

How wretched is man’s condition, which like a hireling labors for others, is in need for itself, and cannot sustain itself except by another’s mercy! Daily under dread, under fear, enduring heavy servitude, and, so as not to be caught by its master, it thinks that, wandering and fugitive, it can hide under some shadow of this world. Consider that man of whom Sirach says in Ecclesiasticus: “Every man who transgresses on his bed, despising and saying in his soul: Who sees me? Darkness surrounds me and walls. Whom do I fear?” Does he not seem to you truly a hireling, who has squandered … like that young man in the Gospel, of whom we read … the portion of the property received from his father, and needy and destitute, to relieve his hunger, began to feed another’s flocks, so as to earn his keep by wages? But that young man nevertheless turned at last, because he returned to his father and did not suppress his sins but confessed them; whereas this man, who thinks he is not seen by him who sees all things and supposes that his misdeeds can be hidden by darkness, holds up a shadow, but believes in vain that he lies hidden, since the eye of the Lord, brighter than the sun, detects all hidden things, lights up dark things, penetrates the conscience of the inmost heart, and descends into the heights and depths. Vain, then, is he who thinks himself safe in darkness, since he cannot avoid the light which shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. So he is caught like a runaway and a bad hireling, and recognized before he hides himself, because all things are known to the Lord before he seeks them, not only what has been done but also what will be.

So he perishes in empty hope who thinks he can hide his crime: that is a tale, not the truth. Indeed the tale of sinners is hateful, bearing not fruit but groaning. “For the narrative of a fool is a burden on the way.” For what else is sin but a burden, which weighs down the traveller of this world, pressed under the heavy load of transgression? If he did not wish to lie under the burden, he should have listened to the one who says: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.”

What is more miserable than when the very bed given for common rest inflicts a grievous wound? For then we usually recall what we have done, and the inner conscience is pierced by the goads of its own deeds. Hence Scripture says to them: “What you say in your hearts, be pierced on your beds.” It is indeed the remedy of what is owed, but still it has wounded the conscience. But suppose sleep sometimes creeps upon the weary: we are terrified by dreams, harassed by visions, so that it is no longer rest but punishment. For so the riches of the world pass away like the dream of one who wakes. Someone has risen from the sleep of this body and possessed nothing, and lost the very thing he believed he had.

Set before me now that rich man who amassed daily gains and various profits and was harassed by his desires, suddenly coming to his senses and considering within himself that when he dies he will not take everything with him, nor will the glory of his house go down with him, and that what he possesses in this life holds some pleasure, but not for the future, and opening his eyes to heavenly things. Does he not seem to you like one who drank in his sleep and thought he had drunk, and feasted in his sleep and thought he had feasted, but opened his eyes and recognized that his soul had hoped in vain and still hungers and still thirsts? For avarice has no measure and is not filled by seizing, but is spurred on and is the more needy the more it has acquired. So this man too has risen, and the dream is vain.

But let us hear him speaking again. His friends, who had come to console him, were pressing upon him and, like enemies, urging him with bitter words. For there is one kind of solace for those placed in hardship and bitterness: to be free of fault, so that they do not seem to be suffering their adversities as the price of transgression. This too they were eager to take from the holy man, so that he would seem to be himself the author of his hardship, as one who had incurred the Lord’s offense by grave sins and was suffering for his impieties. They described the punishments of the wicked, who sow vices and reap sorrows for themselves, who perish by the command of God and die by the breath of his anger; who blows upon houses of clay for those who dwell in them and they dry up; who frustrates the thoughts of the crafty and stops the mouth of the unjust. What they asserted was true of the Lord’s power, but not fitting to the merits of so great a man. To these, then, he answered: “In truth I know that it is so.”

“For how can a mortal be just before the Lord? For if he wishes to contend with him in judgment, he will not hear him, so as not to answer one word of his with a thousand. For he is wise in understanding and strong and great. Who is so hard as to be able to stand in his sight? He makes the mountains grow old, and they do not know it, and overturns them in his anger; he shakes the world from its foundations, and its pillars are moved; he speaks to the sun, and it does not rise, and he seals up against the stars; he alone stretches out the heaven and walks as on a pavement upon the sea; he makes the Pleiades and Hesperus and the north and the chambers of the south; he does great and unsearchable things, glorious and immense, without number. If he passes by me, I shall not see him; and if he goes past me, even so I shall not know it.” With how much more vehement a trumpet did he sound forth the Lord’s power? But in it is the help of the just, not their ruin. Indeed, his might seems to be expressed, but even more the mysteries of our redemption are declared.

For who are the mountains he made to grow old but Moses, Aaron, Joshua son of Nun, Gideon, the prophets, all the books of the Old Testament? The Lord Jesus came; he brought a new testament, and that which was old became old. The Christian was renewed, the Jew grew old; grace was renewed, the letter grew old. He overturned the mountains and turned them about. For he overturned and undermined the understanding according to the letter and established spiritual understanding. So that carnal understanding of the law vanished; it became spiritual. Hence the apostle says: “We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal.” But even he who was carnal became spiritual, as he himself asserted, saying: “For I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” These mountains, then, Jesus made to grow old, and the Jews do not know it. For had they known, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty, never would they still follow Jewish follies. So they are the ones who do not know. Hence in the Gospel the Lord Jesus says: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

But they are not excused because they do not know, since they refuse to know what they ought to have recognized. Certainly we do not begrudge them, if they follow the Lord’s sentence; for a sentence usually absolves past things, not future. But not even he is free of crime who crucified the author of his salvation and afterwards did not ask for pardon. Suppose he did not know before whom he was persecuting: yet when he was placed on the cross he ought to have recognized him as the Lord of all the elements, under whom all the elements trembled: the sky was darkened, the sun fled, the earth split, the tombs of the dead opened, the dead received again the company of the living. Hence the centurion too said: “Truly this was the Son of God.” The centurion recognizes one not his own, the Levite does not recognize his own; the Gentile reveres, the Hebrew abjures. Not without reason, then, were the pillars of the world shaken, when the chief priests did not believe; but the old ones were shaken so that the new might be made firm, as he himself deigned to say: “I have made firm its pillars.” Hear which pillars he made firm: “Peter and James and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave the right hand of fellowship to me and Barnabas.”

How then do they plead that they did not know, some of whom saw, and others learned, that the sun withdrew before the day’s course was complete and came out again before the space of night had passed, making night in day and day in night? Surely they ought to have understood that the sun withdrew at command and came out at command. For the Lord had foretold that he would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth; the sun learned this and kept the precept. So it was in doubt, saying: “What shall I do? I rise, and it is day; I set, and it is night. If I keep my course, I shall delay the world’s salvation. Let us hasten to our own redemption too; I too ought to hasten to new life; for by the benefit of the cross, by which all things are renewed, there will be a new sun and a new heaven. I hasten, then, so that I may see that Sun of righteousness enlightening the souls of all. But what shall I do? He wants the resurrection to take place after three days. I have found what to do, so that I may make no delay and yet keep the number of the days. I will not make a whole day and a whole night. I will shorten the hours, so that the Lord Jesus may be among the dead for three days and nights, yet rise from the dead sooner than the intervals of three days and nights allow. I will shorten the hours, then, when he has mounted the cross. From the sixth hour let it at once be night, so that I may not see the Lord’s passion but flee the spectacle of a parricidal persecution. I will set, and there will be a night of three hours; I will come out and renew the day, so that it may be of three hours: the first day is run through; the second night will follow in its own space; likewise the day will follow; the third night will begin; the Lord will rise in the night, and there will be day in the light of the one rising, so that this may be fulfilled: ‘And the night will be lit up like the day.’ This is that great day which Abraham saw and rejoiced, of which David too said: ‘This is the day which the Lord has made; let us exult and rejoice in it,’ in which I shall take part not by the service of labor but by the fruit of exultation.”

The Lord himself, then, will lead the day, and before the end of the world the light of the world will be seen, which enlightens every man coming into this world. He is the Lord who seals and numbers the multitude of the stars; he is the one who alone stretches out the heaven, who walked as on a pavement upon the sea, when Peter saw him walking and said: “Lord, bid me come to you on the waters.” And the Lord bade him, but he faltered, and had the Lord not stretched out his right hand to him, he would have sunk in the waves and perished. The flesh faltered, the right hand saved. And he said to him: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” So it was faith that walked in the apostle, not flesh. Indeed faith faltered, and the flesh had begun to feel shipwreck. This is said not improperly, because the flesh is the ship of the soul, as it is written: “Those who go down to the sea in ships,” and elsewhere: “There pains as of a woman in labor. With a vehement wind you will shatter the ships of Tarshish.” For our souls, when they are in labor with the Word, bring forth pains; but she who has given birth no longer remembers the sorrow for joy, because a man is born to her, who redeemed the world. The ships of Tarshish, then, that is, spiritual ships, which brought Solomon gold and silver, are our bodies, which have a treasure in earthen vessels, as the apostle said; or because here too they are shattered in doubtful childbirth, according to what is said: “Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing!” (for when the soul is shaken, the flesh is tossed); or they will be stirred by the vehement Spirit poured in, when at the completion of time they must rise, according to what is written: “Come, Spirit, and breathe into these dead, and they will live.” Hence Job himself says further on: “For I know that he is eternal and mighty who will loose me on the earth, to raise up my skin, which has endured these things.” They are shattered, then, because they are raised to judgment. But there is a good shattering; for “a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise,” and elsewhere: “Heal its breaches.” But to Jehoshaphat too it was said: “They were shattered so as not to go to Tarshish,” because he had joined himself with a sacrilegious man. Shattering, then, signifies both things, because both are in the day of judgment, when all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God and come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. The prophet David too signifies this, saying: “There pains of a woman in labor. As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God.” For he includes both the pain and the joy to come: pain at the judgment, joy at the acquittal.

But let us return to the course of the remonstrance before us. “He has made many breaches in me,” he says. “He does not let me breathe; he has filled me with bitterness; and because he is mighty in strength, no one can resist his judgment. If I am just in heart, my tongue goes astray. Wrath destroys the great and mighty. The wicked are in grievous death, but the just are mocked; for they have been given into the hands of the wicked.” Look at each point. To the mighty their own wrath is grievous, to the wicked their wickedness, to the just the infirmity of their condition. So nothing is free from danger. A man’s strength and greatness is deceived by its own power; wickedness is afflicted; virtue is mocked. The one falls because he can do more; the other is afflicted because he can do nothing. It is a fault of our condition, because our life is swifter than a runner; it has passed and seen nothing. Like the track of a ship, or of an eagle flying in search of food, so too the life of man passes. What we say we forget, and no mark of our passing is detected except what is full of sorrow and groaning. “I am shaken,” he says, “in all my limbs. Would that there were a mediator for us, both to reprove and to judge between us both.”

“I will say to the Lord: Why do you judge me so? Is it good for you that I should be unjust, because you have rejected the works of your hands and attended to the counsel of the wicked? Do you see as a mortal sees? Or is your life like a man’s, or your years like a man’s, that you have sought out my iniquities and searched out my sins? For you know that I have not acted impiously; but who is there to deliver from your hands?” Great faith, great authority of conscience, to summon God as witness of one’s own mind! He does not deny what belongs to our condition; he repels what belongs to impiety; he confesses what belongs to weakness. To have sinned belongs to our condition, because no one is free from falling; to act impiously belongs not to our condition but to faithlessness and is the poison of a most wicked mind. The just man does not acknowledge this; but man’s acquittal lies in God’s mercy, not in man’s power.

“Your hands,” he says, “formed me; afterwards you turned and struck me. Remember that you made me of clay and will return me to the earth. Did you not milk me like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, you knit me together with bones and sinews; you put life and mercy in me, and your visitation guarded my spirit.” What a lament of the holy man for our common weakness, what authority in his plea, that God made man with his own hands! The fault is excused by the plea of weakness; grace is commended by the privilege of an eternal work and the condescension of heavenly protection. On this passage David too spoke most beautifully, saying: “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you visit him?”

“Having these things in you,” he says, “I know that you can do all things, and nothing is impossible to you. For if I sin, you will guard me; but you have not made me spotless from iniquity. If I am wicked, woe to me! If I am just, I cannot lift myself up; for I am full of confusion. I am hunted like a lion for the slaughter.” See three things: “If I sin,” he says, “you will guard me.” And so, O man, confess your sin, that you may obtain pardon. Tell your iniquities, that you may be justified. Why do you blush to confess those in which you were born? It is a crime of one who denies, not of one who confesses, to deny that you were born. Would that you kept what you received! Why do you think you have what you did not receive? So let the sinner confess, let the wicked groan, let the just not lift himself up and exalt himself, lest through arrogance he lose the fruit of righteousness.

And he says beautifully: “If I am just, I cannot lift myself up; for I am full of confusion.” For the just man pays more attention to his frailty than to … The wise man recognizes it, the foolish does not. Indeed the wise man is pierced by his falls, the fool delights in them; the just man is his own accuser, the unjust his own defender; the just man wishes to forestall his accuser by confessing his sin, the unjust desires to hide his sin. The one comes forward at the beginning of his speech to reveal his error; the other, with his many words, lulls the accusation to sleep so as not to reveal his error.

Adding again, he says: “Why have you written bitter things against me and laid upon me the sins of my youth?” Beautifully he seized on that age for his complaint, which is usually more slippery toward vice. For childhood has innocence, old age prudence, and young manhood, which borders on adolescence, a regard for good reputation and shame at offending; adolescence alone is weak in strength, infirm in counsel, hot with vice, disdainful of advisers, enticed by delights. In so great, so rugged and stormy a whirlwind of this world, why are such frequent shipwrecks charged to an improvident age? Hence David splendidly asked pardon of the Lord for that whole period of his life, saying: “Remember not the sins of my youth and of my ignorance,” because then above all the heat of the body boils and is set aflame by the surge of steaming blood.

But let us hear him again. “Mortal man, born of woman,” he says, “is short of life and full of wrath; like a flower he bloomed and fell, and he departs like a shadow and does not stay. Is not an account required even of him, and have you made him enter into judgment in your sight? Who is clean from filth? No one, even if his life on earth be of one day.” Truly a pitiable condition, that he is compelled to render an account of his sin, which he cannot avoid, to enter into judgment, to come into the sight of the almighty Lord, to set out the grounds of his deeds, which he has run through in so many ages of his life, since no one can be clean from sin, so that from the very cradle fault creeps upon infancy before there is any sense of error. And how pitiable this too, that his life is short, its enticement sweet, its hardship manifold, its wrath daily. And so in a slight delight there is lasting bitterness.

“There is hope for a tree,” he says; “for if it is cut down, it will grow green again, and if its branch has died on the rock, it will flower at the scent of water and produce a harvest like a young plant. But a man, when he dies, is gone; and mortal man, when he falls, is no more. For the sea rages only for a time.” We have looked at the course of the prophetic speech, drawn from the two lower elements, earth and sea, which are subject to every injury and frequent storms. How strong an argument he has expressed of our hardship! The shrubs of the earth and the leafy trees, he says, even when they have died, rise again for the uses of life. The sea too usually rages only by turns of the seasons. But our flesh is always in turmoil and is a storm to itself, and never has a holiday from the motions of storms and pitiable shipwrecks.

“But when he has fallen asleep, he will not rise until the heaven is not sewn together.” This seems to declare: until the heaven is renewed; for there will be a new heaven and a new earth, as it is written. For what is sewn is old, and what is old will be changed. Indeed, hear him who says: “In the beginning you founded the earth, O Lord, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a covering you will change them, and they will be changed.” We can also add this, that what is old is sewn, what is new is gathered. “From the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven is taken by force, and the forceful seize it.” So the synagogue was sewing it in a few; the church gathers it in thousands. Or because now the heaven seems sewn together with clouds and mist and nocturnal darkness and the saffron blush of the rising day, often woven of varied and many-colored appearance; but then there will be no more night, and they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord will shine on them, as John said. Or because “woe to those who sew pillows to overturn the souls of the people.”

To the prophet lamenting the misery of our frailty, which would have no rest in this life and would lose everything by the sudden onset of death, the Holy Spirit poured in the knowledge that men would not rise until he came who would not sew old things to new nor put a new garment onto an old garment, but would make all things new, as he himself said: “Behold, I will make new things.” For he is the resurrection, the firstborn from the dead, in whom we have all received the prerogative of the resurrection to come; yet he alone so far has risen by an everlasting resurrection.

Having heard, then, what God had spoken in him, and having learned through the Holy Spirit that the Son of God would not only come to earth but would also descend to the underworld to raise the dead (which was indeed done then as a testimony to those present and an example to those to come), he turned to the Lord and said: “Would that you kept me in the underworld and hid me until your wrath ceases, and set a time for me in which you remember me! For if a man dies, he will live, completing the days of his life. I will wait until I come to be again. Then you will call me, and I will answer you; do not despise the works of your hands. You have numbered my devices, and nothing of my sins will escape you. You have sealed up my iniquities in a bag and marked whatever I passed over unknowing.” How sweet is this passage, which confirms us concerning the resurrection, and how it seems to agree with the Lord’s word which we read in the Gospel, where he says: “Then they will begin to say to the mountains: Fall upon us, and to the hills: Cover us.” For at the end of the age there will be the wrath of the Lord. Rightly, then, does the holy man prefer to rise to judgment rather than to a time of divine anger, which is terrible even to the innocent.

At the same time he is understood to prophesy, by saying, “You will set me a time in which you remember me,” that he would be raised at the Lord’s passion, as is shown at the end of this book. Yet he does not cease to lament, and the more he understands that resurrection is set before him, the more he desires to flee this life, seeing himself handed over into the hands of adversaries, cast into the power of the wicked, his very friends turned into enemies, who, when they ought to have consoled him, brought ruin upon ruin. Yet, mindful of his pure conscience and clean prayer, he says: “O earth, do not cover the blood of my flesh,” so that his prayer may be directed like incense to the Lord and not linger on the earth. For the prayer of a saint pierces the clouds. But the prayer of a sinner the earth, opening its mouth, hides in the blood of the flesh, as was said by God to Cain the fratricide: “Cursed are you from the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand, when you till the earth.”

So the holy man tearfully laments the times of this life. “I perish,” he says, “and am carried about by the wind; I pray for burial and do not obtain it. I pray in my distress. And what shall I do? My days have passed in horror; the joints of my heart are broken.” Yet nowhere does he detract from the judgment of God; for he knows that the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God is profound, and his judgments inscrutable and his ways unsearchable.

“The sons of the proud,” he says, “have not trodden them, nor has the lion passed through them.” For who could grasp his ways, who has penetrated hidden secrets? “Whence,” he says, “has wisdom been found, or what is the place of understanding? Mortal man does not know its way, nor has it been found among men. The abyss said: It is not in me; and the sea said: It is not with me.” It is not permitted you, O man, to know the heights of wisdom; therefore it is written for you: “Do not be high-minded, but fear.” Why do you curiously desire to search out what it is not expedient for you to know nor given you to learn? Paul heard certain secrets of wisdom which he was forbidden to make known to others, and therefore he was caught up into paradise, caught up as far as the third heaven, to hear things he could not hear while placed on earth. If a man was not allowed to speak what he heard, how does one inquire into what he has not heard? You are not permitted to know the counsels of the emperor here on earth, and do you wish to know divine things? You are not permitted to search too curiously into what is done on earth, and do you curiously ask what is done above the heaven? Why do you argue about where wisdom was born? Man does not know its way, nor has perfect wisdom been found among men: not in Moses, not in Aaron, not in Joshua son of Nun, not in David himself, who said: “The uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom you have made manifest to me,” for he himself said later: “I became like a beast before you.” To know the height of wisdom is above you, O man; it is enough for you to believe. “For if you do not believe,” he says, “neither will you understand.” You cannot know the abyss, you cannot grasp the abyss; how will you grasp the height of wisdom? The abyss said: “It is not in me”; and can you say that wisdom is in you?