On the Complaints of Job and David 4.2–4.26

But although likenesses of this kind are supported by devout examples, and the nature of deer is innocent and gentle, I think that the deer set before the prophet for imitation in this passage is the one of whom Solomon, the defender of his father’s mind, said in the Proverbs: “Let the deer of friendship and the foal of your graces converse with you.” For the true Son of God expressed in himself the nature which he himself gave to living creatures. He came into this world like a deer and joined himself with wonderful simplicity to those by whom snares were being prepared for him. For the simplicity of such deer is said to be such that, when they see themselves hunted, they attach themselves to those horsemen who, appointed to serve the deceit, lead them on by a show of flight and a pretense of companionship right up to the nets. So, then, the Lord, as though unaware of danger and unforeseeing, mingled with the Jews who were laying a trap for him, and took into his company Judas the betrayer, by whose deadly pretense he came even to the snares of the cross and the nets of the passion. Hence, turning to him, he said: “Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” And in this way he came to the nets of the synagogue and willingly put them on; but he was not entangled or bound, he who set all free.

Indeed he stood out above the nets. And because his own had not received him, he called the church and conferred his grace upon her, as the most holy church herself declares in the Song of Songs, saying: “I have adjured you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and the strengths of the field, if you will stir up and stir up again love until it pleases.” She asks, then, in the scent of the field, which holy Jacob smelled, that is, by that faith, that devotion, that her bridegroom be roused by the daughters of Jerusalem, so that he may hasten to his bride, and that his love be roused in her, or even that he himself be roused, because love is the bridegroom. For “God is love,” as John said. But he did not allow himself to be roused by others, he who was hastening of his own accord; coming out of his chamber, he exulted like a giant to run his course. The bride saw him and heard the voice of the one coming, and suddenly turning she said: “Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills”; for he leaps the greater ones and bounds over the lesser, so as not to suffer hindrances to his devoted haste. “My kinsman,” she says, “is like a roe or a young stag upon the mountains of Bethel.” Good is the stag whose mountain is the house of God, to which he ran with such speed that he anticipated the prayers and desires of the bride. Indeed, the one she had seen coming from afar she suddenly knew to be present with her; hence she says: “Behold, he is behind our wall, looking through the windows, standing out above the nets. My kinsman answered and said to me: Arise, come, my near one, my beautiful one, my dove, for behold, the winter has passed, the rain has gone; it has departed by itself; the flowers have appeared in the land.” The winter is the synagogue, the rain the Jewish people, who could not see the sun; the flowers are the apostles. And he added: “The time of pruning has come; the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.” That harvest is the faith of the church; the voice of the turtledove is chastity.

Not only in these … but Christ also took on the likeness of the stag, because, coming to earth, he trampled that serpent the devil without any harm to himself; he offered him his heel but did not feel his poison. Hence it was said to him: “You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk.” Let us too, then, be stags, so that we may walk upon serpents. We shall be stags if we follow the voice of Christ, which prepares the stags and makes them not fear the bites of serpents, and if any have perhaps been wounded, takes away their pain by loosing their offence. Of these stags the Lord says to Job: “Have you watched over the birth of the hinds? Have you numbered their months full of birth, and loosed their birth pangs, or reared their young so that they do not fear?” Hear how the young of such hinds do not fear. Let Isaiah teach you, saying: “And the little child will put his hand into the den of asps, and they will not harm him.” And so that you may recognize that it seems to signify the children of the church, he added: “Will you send forth their offspring? Their young will break forth and be multiplied in generation; they will go out and will not return back.” For no one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Rightly, then, the Lord became a stag, so that the voice of the Lord might prepare such stags for himself, of whom he says: “In my name they will cast out demons, they will speak in new tongues, they will take up serpents, and if they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them.” For the holy apostles took up serpents when by the breath of their mouth they drew spiritual wickedness out of the hiding places of bodies, and they did not feel the deadly poisons. Indeed, when a viper leaping from the brushwood had bitten Paul, the barbarians, seeing the viper hanging from his hand, thought he would suddenly die. But he stood undaunted; he was neither moved by the wound nor infused with the poison. Hence, seeing him not as one born by the condition of man but as one brought forth by the grace of God, they thought him above men. See the stag drawing vipers out of their hiding places by the divine Spirit that was in his nostrils, as Job said. “Paul,” it says, “turned in the Spirit and, looking back with grief at the python, said: I command you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to come out of her at once. And it came out that same hour.” See the stag when he comes to baptism and, washed by the stream of the sacred font, casts off all the poisons of persecution. See the stag, the Lord Jesus, when he came to John the Baptist, and to John, who said to him, “I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”, he answered: “Let it be so now.” And with these words, thirsting for the salvation of all, he went down into the waters with all eagerness. But enough: at the beginning of our discourse, as at the beginning of the year according to popular custom, the stag has played with us. Let us go on to the rest.

David, as I said, remonstrates, saying to the Lord: “As the deer longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul has thirsted for the living God. When shall I come and appear before the face of God?” The saint is aflame and cannot contain himself (for the greatness of the mind is greater than the size of any body), and in his mind, free from care, he desires to fly from earth to heavenly things, as elsewhere he himself says: “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” For here are snares, by which the just man, even if he is not entangled, is nevertheless hindered; here are sorrows and anxieties, there gladness, where grace is; here, finally, are the chains of the body, which Paul was eager to loose, so that, stripped of all hindrances, he might stand free before the Lord. This, then, is what David’s soul thirsted for: to see God no longer by faith but face to face, and not only to be away from the body but to be released from the body; for “to depart and be with Christ is far better,” because to the just man “to die is gain.” And it is a great gain to be without sin, not to be moved by the enticements of offences. For who is clean from filth, when not even the life of one day of man on earth is without the contagion of offences? So by living we contract losses of innocence; by death we gain the end of error. Gain, then, is acquired by death; but by the use of life, as for wretched debtors, the interest of a usurious debt increases to their guilt. And well does the soul thirst which hastens to the spring, not of this water, but of eternal life, of which he said above: “For with you is the spring of life, and in your light we shall see light.” Rightly, then, David was hastening to arrive and appear before the face of God, whose countenance is light, because he enlightens all whom the Lord beholds.

“My tears,” he says, “have been my bread day and night, while it is said to me daily: Where is your God?” Rightly are tears bread there where one hungers for righteousness. For “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” There are, then, tears that are bread and strengthen the heart of man. To this discussion that saying of Ecclesiastes too is fitting: “Cast your bread upon the face of the water,” because there is heavenly bread where there is the water of grace, since those rightly receive the substance of the Word and the nourishment of mystical reason from whose belly flow rivers of living water. Likewise also there is this living bread where there is the water of tears and the weeping of repentance. For so it is written: “In weeping they went out, and in consolation I will bring them back.”

Blessed, then, are those whose tears are bread, who have deserved to laugh, because “blessed are you who weep.” “Remembering these things,” he says, “I poured out my soul upon me.” The saint gathers himself from the things that are outside and pours out his soul upon himself, so that the soul poured out over the body may hide the weakness of the flesh, cover the appetite of the body, and set forth everywhere the virtue of the soul and mind. Hence later he says too: “I will pour out my prayer in his sight.” Where prayer is poured out, there sins are covered. But of what things does he say he is mindful? Of those surely that he desired, that he might come and appear in the sight of God, that he might see that eternal court of his, in which he walked about in spirit and delighted in an entry taken for granted.

“For I will go into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and praise, the sound of one feasting.” Not without reason did he weep, since he was dwelling on earth, to whom heavenly tabernacles were owed and for whom the entrance of a mighty court was waiting. Indeed, he preferred that court alone to all the riches of his kingdom, as he himself testified elsewhere, saying: “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, and that I may see the delight of the Lord.” The delight of the Lord is in the church. The church is the image of heavenly things; for after the shadow passed, the image followed. The shadow is the synagogue: in the shadow is the law, in the Gospel the truth. Therefore in the light of the Gospel the image of the truth shines. So the prophet wept because good things full of grace and filled with gladness were being deferred.

Indeed later he says too: “Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged!” And therefore he remonstrated with the Lord, because he was hastening to better things. Yet in these very afflictions of the world there was great consolation for the present and hope for the future. For who would not lift up his mind, who could hope that those blessed companionships were reserved for him in the heavenly tabernacle? But because to our weak condition future things are often a weariness and present things a vexation, therefore the soul of the holy prophet too was troubled when the waves of the body rose up.

I do not want you to wonder that the prophet says his soul was troubled, since the Lord Jesus himself said: “Now my soul is troubled.” For he who took up our infirmities took up our feeling too, in which he was sorrowful even unto death, not because of death; for a voluntary death could not have had sadness, in which there was to be the gladness of all, the refreshment of all. Of it he said elsewhere too: “And I arose and saw, and my sleep became sweet to me.” Good is the sleep that made the hungry not hunger, the thirsty not thirst, for whom he prepared the sweetness of the sacraments. How then was his soul troubled by fear, he who made the souls of others not fear? He was sorrowful even unto death, then, until grace was accomplished. This is proved by his own testimony, saying of his death: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!”

So David, troubled by the slippery windings of this world, says: “Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in God, for I will praise him, the salvation of my countenance and my God.” So when we are anxious and troubled, let hope strengthen us by the expectation of things to come. Look at each point. “Hope, for I will praise,” he says; not “I praise,” but “I will praise”; that is: I will praise better then, when with unveiled face, beholding the glory of God, I shall be refashioned into the same image.

Suddenly, while consoling himself, he turned back to himself and said: “My soul is troubled within me”; that is: I who ought to strengthen others am myself troubled; and because I have no firmness from myself, let us take it from the Author.

“Therefore,” he says, “I will remember you, O Lord, from the land of the Jordan and of Hermon.” He is mindful from the land of the Jordan, in which grace heaps up the memory of devotion. Into the Jordan Naaman the Syrian went down and was made clean of leprosy. In the Jordan Christ was baptized, when he instituted the form of the saving washing. The name Jordan signifies “descent,” the descent which the Lord Jesus made, who cleansed the neighbors of the river Jordan from the contagion of offences. This river comes out of Egypt and divides the land of promise. So one who is troubled, if he takes good counsel, comes out of Egypt and follows the way of light; for they have interpreted Hermon as “the way of the lamp.” Come out first, then, from Egypt, if you wish to see the light of Christ. The Canaanite woman came out from the borders of the Gentiles and found Christ, to whom she said: “Have mercy on me, Son of David!” Moses came out of Egypt and was made a prophet and sent back to the people, to free their souls from the land of affliction. And the lamp of Christ is in the body. This lamp shows you the way. Hence the saint too says: “Your word is a lamp to my feet,” a lamp because it has enlightened the souls of all and shown the way in darkness. The Gospel is the way of the lamp; it shines in the shadow, that is, in the world. Hence elsewhere too you have: “They will be made white as snow in Zalmon,” that is, in the overshadowing.

Christ is also the Jordan that divides the land. Hear how he divides: “And a sword will pierce through your own soul, to reveal the thoughts of many hearts,” because he is the divider of our souls, who goes down into the inmost secrets of the heart and detects the thoughts of minds. This sword is the living Word of God. Indeed in Hebrews you read thus: “For the word of God is living and strong and sharper than any sharpest sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow.” This is the spring of Siloam, which means “sent,” since Christ said that he was sent by the Father. There is also that division which is gathered from the fact that tribes of the Jews lived on both banks of the Jordan; since the Son of Man, who came down from heaven in later times, that true Jordan, that true divider of earthly and heavenly things, gave the fathers a divided possession: one to be possessed on earth, the other to be kept for the merits of the future life. Both of these belong to Christ alone: whether to divide heavenly things or to detect hidden things; for he who detects hidden things divides inward things, which is surely the mark of divinity. Indeed you have it written that God said: “I will rejoice and divide Shechem.” This is that magnificent portion which Jacob assigned to his son Joseph as more excellent than all. Hence he says: “But I give you Shechem, a magnificent portion above your brothers, which I took from the hands of the Amorites with my sword and bow.” That division was owed to the Lord alone, which is comprehended by the Word, that is, by that spiritual sword of the true Solomon. What does “alone” mean? The Father without Christ, or Christ without the Father? By no means. When I say the Father alone, I do not separate the Son, because the Son is in the bosom and secret of the Father. When I say the Son alone, I join the Father too, as the Son too joined him, saying: “Behold, the hour comes when you will leave me alone; but I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” So the Father too is called “blessed and only mighty” in such a way that the Son, who is always in the Father, is not separated from him. Indeed John says splendidly: “In the beginning was the Word”; but he was not without the Father. And God the Father was, but he was not without the Word, because “the Word was with God.”

This Shechem is the church; for Solomon chose her, whose hidden affection he distinguished. This Shechem is Mary, whose soul the sword of God pierces and divides. This Shechem is “ascending,” as the interpretation has it. Who the ascending one is, hear him saying of the church: “Who is she that goes up made white, leaning on her brother?” This is the active one, which in Greek is called ἐναργής, because she shines by faith and works. To her children it is said: “Let your works shine before my Father who is in heaven.”

David, then, is mindful of God from the land of the Jordan and Hermon, “from the little mountain.” Who is this little mountain? Let us consider whether perhaps the divinity of Christ is the great mountain. Indeed, “I fill heaven and earth,” says the Lord. If, then, the divinity of Christ is a great mountain, surely his incarnation is a small mountain. Christ, then, is both, the great mountain and the lesser: great indeed, because “great is the Lord and great his power”; lesser, because it is written: “You made him a little less than the angels.” Hence Isaiah says: “We saw him, and he had no form or beauty.” Yet the same became both lesser from great and great from lesser: lesser from great, because, “though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself and took the form of a servant”; and great from lesser, because Daniel says: “And the stone which struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” If you ask what this stone is, recognize it: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” Yet the same, even when he seemed small, was great. Isaiah agrees with this, saying: “A child is born to us, a son is given to us, whose beginning is upon his shoulders, and he is called the angel of great counsel.” All for your sake is Christ: a stone for your sake, that you may be built up; a mountain for your sake, that you may ascend. Ascend, then, upon the mountain, you who seek heavenly things. For this he bowed the heaven, that you might be nearer; for this he rose to the summit of the mountain, that he might lift you up.

Not without reason, then, did deep call to deep, so that this mountain might become small, of which the prophet says: “Deep calls to deep at the voice of your cataracts.” The Old Testament did not prevail for the redemption of this world; it called upon the New Testament and summoned it as if to its aid. The law cried out, announcing the Gospel. For it was half-full, and therefore it was necessary that he should come who would fulfill the law. For “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,” he who came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. Hear how the law is a deep: “Your judgments are like the great deep.” At the same time understand from this that both are the testament of one wisdom, which he came to fulfill as his own. By the cataracts we understand the depths of the words and the force of the heavenly speech, which have flowed to us like rain from heaven. So Christ and divine Scripture are the remedy of all weariness and the one refuge in temptations.

Indeed, when David noticed that the swellings of the world’s waves were coming over him (and we must undergo very many of them on the sea of this life), mindful of the Lord’s mercies, which he promised in countless oracles, he turned to prayer and remonstrated with God, knowing that his mercy is commanded in the light, that is, in the law, because “your precepts are light,” but in temptations it is shown as in the darkness of night. Hence, like a traveller who desires to return home and reach the place he is making for, but is wearied by the rough road of this life, he summons a guide and begs for relief.

“With me,” he says, “is prayer to the God of my life; I will say to God: You are my upholder.” Rightly he seeks help already known to him and appeals to the author of the promise and the provider of a customary gift, so that in coming to help, if the merit of the man gives offence, the divine precedent may not. Someone says: “When did God uphold him?” To establish this, come with me to the beginning of sacred Scripture; see how the Lord shaped man from clay with his own hands. Hence this same man says later: “Your hands made me and formed me.” Like a potter, God wrought the fabric of human flesh. And to Jeremiah it is said: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there you will hear my words.” It often happens to a potter that, while a vessel is being shaped, it falls from his hands and he gathers the clay again to remake the vessel. Indeed Jeremiah too says: “I went down and saw how the vessel which he was making fell in his hands.” And again he says: “He made another vessel as it pleased him.” Rightly, then, he is called upholder, because he himself took us up in his hands, he himself formed us. Those are the vessels of a human potter, some for honor, some for dishonor. We are all earthen vessels: even if one is a king, he is an earthen vessel; even if an apostle, he is a vessel. Hence Paul too says: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”; and the prophet says of a king: “Jeconiah has been despised like a vessel for which there is no use.” And he added: “Earth, hear the word of the Lord: write this man down as disowned.” As by a father’s right, our God is wont to disown degenerate sons; therefore the earth too writes down those who are sons of the earth. Hence, when the Jews were accusing the adulteress, the Lord Jesus wrote with his finger on the earth. But the just are not written in the earth, as we read; to them it is said: “Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”

So the Lord upheld us when he fashioned us; he upholds us also when he commands us to be born. Hence the just man says: “You upheld me from my mother’s womb.” Of what mother? “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Those whom he forms he also upholds; he upholds them also as they come forth: “and before you came out of your mother’s womb, I sanctified you.” He is an upholder who has taken up with his hands, as the maker of the human race is called upholder, and who has taken up by his visitation, so as to protect. Hence the prophet himself says elsewhere: “He who dwells in the help of the Most High will say to the Lord: You are my upholder and my refuge.” The first upholding is of working, the second of defence. Indeed, hear Moses saying: “Spreading out his wings, he took them and bore them upon his shoulders,” as the eagle takes them up, which is wont to test its young, so as to keep and rear those in whom it has noticed the character of a true birth and the grace of an uncorrupted nature confirmed, or to cast out those in whom it has detected, at a still tender age, the weakness of a degenerate origin.

“Why have you forgotten me, and why have you cast me off?” God does not forget (for it is impossible that he should forget, to whom all things made and to come are present), but our sins infuse in him a reason for forgetting, so that he blots out those whom he has known to be unworthy of his visitation; for “the Lord knows those who are his.” Yet to those who work iniquity he says: “I do not know you.” Who, then, can say to God: “Why have you forgotten me?” Yet this is common to the saints and to us weak ones. The saint says it as one conscious of his merit, and yet the holier he is, the humbler. But if the saint says it with difficulty, what shall I, a sinner, say, unless I refer it to this: why have you forgotten your work, why have you forgotten your visitation, finally why have you forgotten my weakness? For “what is man but that you visit him?” Do not, then, forget the weak. Remember, O Lord, that you made me weak; remember that you fashioned me of dust. How shall I be able to stand unless you always attend to strengthening this clay, so that my firmness may come forth from your face? When you turn away your face, all things will be troubled; if you look on me, woe is me. You have nothing to look at in me but the contagion of offences; it is not useful either to be forsaken or to be seen, because while we are seen we give offence. We can, however, reckon that he does not cast off those he sees, because he cleanses those he looks upon. A fire burns before him, to burn up crime.

It is good for us, then, not to be cast off. Therefore David complains, because he believed he had been cast off, who before had been upheld. Indeed later he said: “In you I have been strengthened from the womb.” But above too we have written: “Upon you I was cast from the womb; from my mother’s belly you are my God.” It is good even to be cast, but upon God. Indeed this is said in the twenty-first psalm in the person of Christ, who was truly cast from the womb of the Virgin upon the Father; for earthly things did not receive him when he died. Hence, placed on the cross, as he gave up his spirit, he said to the Father: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Let no one, then, add “Lord,” as the psalm singers do, which I have found neither in my Latin manuscript nor in the Greek nor in the Gospel, which is clearer. Indeed above he had said: “Father, forgive them this sin,” and therefore he commended his spirit into his hands as to a Father, in whose bosom the Son always is. Although, even if they add that he said “Lord,” let them consider that he speaks thus as a man placed in death.

So he was cast from the womb upon the Father, “from his mother’s belly”; that is, he defined that the womb which cast him forth is his mother’s belly. But the Father says: “From the womb before the morning star I begot you.” The Father surely did not cast forth the Son, from whom the Son never went out, as he himself says: “I was delivered up and did not go out.” He did not cast forth him to whom he is joined by the unity of the same substance. It can therefore also be read thus: “Upon you I was cast from the womb, from my mother’s belly,” so that there follows: “You are my God; do not depart from me.” It can also be read thus: “From my mother’s belly you are my God,” since even placed in the womb I never withdrew from you; I was with you, I who, like Jonah placed in the belly of the whale, was entreating you for the people. And truly from his mother’s belly he was with God, according to what is written: “For before the child knew good or evil, he chose what is good,” and: “Before he could call father or mother, he plundered the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria,” so that, the Gentiles called forth, he might gain a kingdom for the Father by the worship of devout piety.

Let us look at the rest. “Why,” he says, “have you cast me off, and why do I go about sad while the enemy afflicts me, breaks my bones? Those who trouble me have reproached me, while it is said to me daily: Where is your God? Why are you sad, my soul?” and the rest. The first remonstrance contained a complaint that the good things whose fruit was already desired were being put off. The second remonstrance: that the coming of Christ, awaited by the wise, was being delayed, the coming which the law had announced, which the prophets promised; and the hearts of the just burned the more impatiently because they had learned that he would come for the redemption of all … also of all, to whom he would open the way of virtue by the path of the Gospel and show the paths of good works, as he himself said in Proverbs: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.” Therefore it was said to him: “Where is your God?” because Christ had not yet come but was hoped for. The devil raged, then, to crush those whom he knew would believe at the Lord’s coming, and he afflicted them with various deaths. David remonstrates, then, to rouse the one who delays by a prophetic complaint, to urge him to hasten, to remind him to help. We have a likeness of this remonstrance later too, where the same prophet says: “O God, why have you cast us off for ever?” And there he openly and tearfully lamented that he had forgotten his congregation and cast away the rod of his inheritance, and that his enemies had risen against the people of God, of whom he says: “And those who hate you have boasted in the midst of your feast.” Perhaps this little verse would seem to point to the Assyrians, who triumphed over the people of the Jews, were it not followed by: “They set up their signs as signs, and I did not know them.” There are always standards in war, which usually go before those about to fight and lead the column of soldiers. Each unit or legion follows its own standards; and if they have been scattered in the tumult of battle, they return to where they see their standards, however far off they are. Each commander sets up these standards and prescribes that they be followed. But there are also other standards which a victorious enemy imposes and decrees to be observed as by captives; but the faithful soldier follows his own standards and does not recognize others’.