Each of these epithets is sufficient to show the beauty of Job’s soul. But, as a lover multiplies the details in order to describe the one he loves, so the same occurs here. Blameless the text says, that is, perfectly virtuous. Upright, and also true, and also pious, and again, he turned away from any evil. Notice the words from any, and not simply from one evil and not from another. Where are those who assert that human nature is inclined toward evil? What fear, what tribunals and what laws made Job as he is?

Even though many others lived in Uz, no one was comparable to Job with regard to piety and innocence. He was of high reputation and was celebrated in everybody’s words. And so that no one might think these things had been granted to Job thanks to his human ability, God never allowed a single possession of Job’s to perish. [God] said, My desire is that even a single hair, a loss that would be the very slightest, may be returned and increased for Job.

Notice how the author first of all speaks about Job’s virtue and then of the goods Job has received from God. Observe the opportunity Job received to have children, and the proportion of children who are boys, desired as a source of greater benefit. Scripture says immediately why the man must receive our praise. It is because of the greatness of Job’s virtue and the fruitfulness of his soul. And indeed we derive all such goods from virtue. That is why I speak about beautiful and plentiful progeny. There shall not be, Scripture says, male or female barren among you.^[1] But Abraham was childless, so that you might learn that Abraham’s goods were not the reward of virtue but of other goods. Therefore God has promised those goods in order to be generous to you.

The author calls Job a man of the East; he was superior to all in radiance and celebrity and could name distinguished and illustrious ancestors. How could Job not be incited to pride by the virtue that reigned in his soul, by the joy which his children gave him and by the fact he was the only one who simultaneously possessed wealth and virtue and the privilege to descend from illustrious fathers? But when these goods fall into the hands of the impious, heed what the prophet says: Since pride has completely grasped them, they have clothed themselves in their injustice and impiety.^[1] But as for Job, he declares, Why do the wicked live and grow old in their prosperity?^[2] Now it was not like that at all for Job. It is not the nature of wealth that causes bad conduct but the mind of those who do not use wealth properly.

You see the greatness of Job’s external wealth; but his internal wealth was even greater. The visible riches were splendid, but the invisible riches were even more splendid because they last; visible riches grow old, lose their value and continually collapse into the most pitiful corruption and destruction.

Mutual understanding, the greatest good, was profound within Job’s family. They were accustomed to have meals together, to hold a common banquet—a custom, to be sure, that significantly contributes to establishing a profitable mutual understanding. Do you perceive, dear brothers, the joy of the banquet mixed with security? Do you observe this brotherly table? Do you see that harmoniously united group? Profound affection is the source of all this.

Here the text stresses the great purity of Job’s children. Since [Job] did not perceive any sin in them, he sacrificed because of [the sons’] disposition. Job was aware that the human weakness and sluggishness that mark young persons often escalates. This is also why St. Paul said, I am not aware of anything against myself.^[1] And the psalmist, Forgive my hidden faults.^[2] Therefore we have to believe that the sons of Job did not die because of their own sins. ^[3] JOB’S RITES OF PURIFICATION. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: Job would sanctify them, that is, Job purified them through the waters of cleansing and through the sacrifices that he offered for them. And since the righteous man had full confidence in the fact that his children were free from manifest sins, thanks to the education and instruction which he had given them, he offered sacrifices for their secret sins and thoughts by saying, It may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. ^[1]

Was there ever a time when the angels did not stand before the Lord? Was it not written about them that a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him?^[1] But this coming, in our opinion, is that of the angels who had been sent to serve human beings. Paul actually says, Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?^[2]

Satan’s going to and fro on the earth represents his exploring the hearts of the carnal. In this way he is seeking diligently for grounds of accusation against them. He goes round about the earth, for he surrounds human hearts in order to steal all that is good in them, that he may lodge evil in their minds, that he may occupy completely what he has taken over, that he may fully reign over what he has occupied, that he may possess the very lives of those he has perfected in sin. Note that he does not say he has been flying through the earth but that he has been walking up and down it. For in fact he is never easily dislodged from whomever he tempts. But where he finds a soft heart, he plants the foot of his wretched persuasion, so that by dwelling there, he may stamp the footprints of evil practice, and by a wickedness similar to his own he may render reprobate all whom he is able to overcome. But in spite of this, blessed Job is commended with these words, Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. To him, whom divine inspiration strengthens to meet the enemy, God praises as it were even in the ears of Satan. For God’s praise of Job is the first evidence of Job’s virtues, so that they may be preserved when they are manifested. But the old enemy is enraged against the righteous the more he perceives that they are hedged around by the favor of God’s protection.

Do you see that Job’s wealth was a gift from God? Do you see that it was not the fruit of injustice? How Job had to suffer in order to demonstrate to people that his wealth was not the fruit of injustice! And behold, the devil himself bore witness to him from above and did not realize that he praised Job as well by saying that he had not acquired that wealth through illicit trading and through the oppression of others. Instead, Job owed his wealth to God’s blessing, and his security came from heaven. You would have not rejoiced if Job had not been virtuous. But the devil praised and covered him with laurels without realizing what he was doing.

[God’s] hand must be understood in a variety of ways. It is either the power that punishes or serves punishment, usually referred to in the Scripture as tools of wrath,^[1] or the protecting and guarding power in the Scripture, No one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand.^[2] Even the Son can be shielded by the hand which protects and supports those who are under it, in accordance with the word, The right hand of the Lord [has] exalted [me]; the right hand of the Lord acts valiantly.^[3] The quoted words prove that no one is tempted without God’s permission. For God says, See, I have given everything into your hand. But in order to show that this permission is given [only] with restrictions, it is added, Only do not stretch out your hand against him. Thus afflictions occur neither due to fate nor arbitrarily but due to God’s permission, in order—as mentioned in the beginning—to proclaim Job’s virtue, but sometimes for other reasons, concerning which we will speak later on.

[Satan] himself willed and desired to receive power over Job, but he did not dare to say so. But you, he says, stretch out your hand. Then, so that he may not say, you indulgently struck him as though he was a household servant, God does not do that which the devil asked. Certainly God could, in doing that, justify himself by saying, I did what you wanted; it is you who told me to touch him.

The day of trial is chosen by the devil in order that he may now overwhelm the holy Job with the variety of damages and afflictions. For previously, after offering the sacrifices, by having his meals in the circle of his children, Job could be safe in God’s protection. It was not without meaning that on the day of the theft of the oxen and donkeys mention was also made of what happened to the children as they were eating together. This was to show that all the misfortunes, by which the soul of the righteous man was to be crushed, happened simultaneously.

Who is the fire? The enemy himself, about whom David said, You will throw burning coals at them.^[1] In fact, he could not, as some people believe, cast thunderbolts, nor brandish lightning, nor set in motion any element. Therefore it is the devil in the semblance of fire who fell on the herds of sheep, with the intention of forcing Job to blaspheme God, as if it were he, who from heaven had destroyed the riches of the righteous.

It is remarkable how the news from the second [messenger] increases Job’s pain. Fire fell from heaven, he says, and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them. Even if Job thoroughly knew the teachings of the truth and understood that afflictions did not occur without God’s permission, the incident still brought him great suffering for the people’s sake. They were confused by what occurred. It was as if God had turned against Job. That the intruders during the attack took the cattle and killed the servants could be interpreted by the less intelligent as if the intruders were simply acting in accordance with the hostile customs of battle. They had attacked and behaved in that way due to lack of discipline and hate. Therefore [one might conclude] that the event was not sent from God. But when the fire that had fallen from heaven was reported, one might have feared that the weak would believe that virtue was nothing admirable, if God even punishes the one who possesses it. Yet even during this incident the holy man did not fall down but focused his entire attention on God’s work.

Therefore we cannot consider these blows as coming directly from God. The devil amplifies the tragedy, as seen in the variety of the announced calamities. But, since Job was pious, he probably said, It is God who strikes. Hence it is necessary to be patient. The devil then argues. Look! the devil says. Consider what kind of men attack you. It is not only God who is fighting against you. Contemplate the great power of the devil and the way he has armed such numerous hordes. The devil has clothed himself in appearances. Even if you do not believe in the reality of divine judgment, you can see his ability to give demonic powers a visible form, even when he cannot create these powers.

Sometimes, while the mind is sustained with the fullness and richness of a gift so large, if it enjoys uninterrupted security in these things, it forgets the source from which they have come. It imagines that it derives these things from itself in a way that never ceases. Hence it is that this same grace sometimes withdraws itself for our good and shows the presumptuous mind how weak it is in itself. For then we really learn the source from which our good qualities proceed. Only by seemingly losing them are we made aware that they can never be preserved by our own efforts. And so for the purpose of tutoring us in lessons of humility, it very often happens that when the crisis of temptation is upon us, such extreme folly comes down upon our wisdom. Then, the mind being dismayed, it does not grasp how to meet the evils that threaten or how to guard against temptation. But this very foolishness wisely instructs the heart. For whatever causes the mind to turn to foolishness for a moment is afterwards faced as reality. As the mind becomes more humble, it becomes wiser. In this way the very wisdom that seems to be lost temporarily is now held in more secure possession.

Do not believe, dear brothers, that Job’s gesture indicates a defeat. It is, above all, a sign of victory. Indeed, if he had done nothing, he would have appeared to be insensitive. Job actually demonstrates himself to be altogether wise, fatherly and pious. What damage did he suffer? He grieves not only for the loss of his children and his cattle but also for the way they died. Who would have not been shattered by such events? Which man of steel would have not been affected? Paul himself often expressed his tearful reaction to events, What are you doing weeping and breaking my heart?^[1] We should admire Paul’s response. In the same way, Job also deserves to be admired because, in spite of the emotion that pushed him to make that moving gesture, he does not speak a single inappropriate word.

The text means that Job was not covered with crimes and evil deeds and would have returned naked, that is, pure and innocent to his mother’s womb. He was so firm in his holy frankness that you may easily imagine he had never turned aside from righteousness nor would have ever passed from virtue to vice in the future.

Job’s words may be more elegantly understood of evil and sin in this way: Naked was I formed from the earth at the beginning, as if from a mother’s womb. Naked to the earth shall I also depart—naked^[1] not of possessions, for that would be a trivial and common thing; rather, naked of evil and sin and of the unsightly shape which follows those who have led bad lives. Obviously all of us human beings are born naked and again are buried naked, swathed only in grave clothes. For God has provided for us another life, and made the present life the way for the course which leads to it. He appoints the supplies derived from what we possess merely as provisions for the way. And when we come to the end of this way, the wealth, consisting of the things which we possessed, journeys no farther with us. For not a single thing that we possess is properly our own. We are properly owners of only one possession, that is, godliness. Death will not rob us of this when it overtakes us. It will, however, throw out everything else, although it will do so against our will. For it is for the support of life that we all have received what we possess; and after enjoying merely the use of it, each one departs, obtaining from life what amounts to a brief memento. For this is the end of all prosperity; this is the conclusion of the good things of this life. It is only right, then, that the infant upon opening its eyes after issuing from the womb, immediately begins with crying, not with laughter. For it weeps, as if bewailing life, at whose hands from the outset it tastes of deadly gifts. For immediately on being born its hands and feet are swaddled; and swathed in bonds, it begins nursing. O introduction to life, precursor to death! The child has but entered on life, and immediately there is put upon it the clothing of the dead; for nature reminds those that are born of their end. This is also why the child, on being born, wails, as if crying plaintively to its mother. Why, O mother, did you bring me out into this life in which prolongation of life is progress to death? Why have you brought me into this troubled world, in which, on being born, swaddled bands are my first experience? Why have you delivered me to such a life as this, in which both a pitiable youth wastes away before old age, and old age is shunned as under the doom of death? Dreadful, O mother, is the course of life, which has death as the goal of the runner. Bitter is the road of life we travel, with the grave as the wayfarer’s inn. Perilous the sea of life we sail, for it has Hades as a pirate to attack us. Humankind alone is born in all aspects naked, without a weapon or clothing born with it. This does not mean you are inferior to the other animals, but the nakedness and the fact you bring nothing with you are designed to produce thought. That thought, in turn, may bring out dexterity, expel sloth, introduce the arts for the supply of our needs, and beget a variety of ingenuity. For, naked, human beings are full of contrivances, being pricked on by their necessity, as by a goad, to figure out how to escape rains, how to elude cold, how to fence off blows, how to till the earth, how to terrify wild beasts; how to subdue the more powerful of them. Wetted with rain, they conceive of a roof; having suffered from cold, they invent clothing; being struck, they constructed a breastplate; their hands bleeding with the thorns in tilling the ground, they avail themselves of the help of tools; in their naked state liable to become a prey to wild beasts, they discovered from their fear an art which frightened the very thing that frightened them. Nakedness begat one accomplishment after another, so that even their nakedness was a gift and benevolence. Accordingly, Job also being made naked of wealth, possessions, of the blessing of children, of a numerous offspring, and having lost everything in a short time, uttered this grateful explanation: Naked came I out of the womb, naked also I shall depart thither, to God and to that blessed lot and rest.

Be perfectly assured of this, that though the reasons for what is ordained by God are beyond us, yet always what is arranged for us by him who is wise and who loves us is to be accepted, be it ever so grievous to endure. He himself knows how he is appointing what is best for each and why the terms of life that he fixes for us are unequal. There exists some reason incomprehensible to us why some are sooner carried far away from us, and some are left a longer while behind to bear the burdens of this painful life. So we should always adore his lovingkindness and not express discontent, remembering those great and famous words of the great athlete Job, when he had seen ten children at one table, in one short moment, crushed to death, The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. As the Lord thought good so it came to pass. Let us adopt those marvelous words. At the hands of the righteous Judge, those who demonstrate similar good deeds shall receive a similar reward. We have not lost the boy;^[1] we have restored him to the Lender. His life is not destroyed; it is changed for the better. He whom we love is not hidden in the ground; he is received into heaven. Let us wait a little while, and we shall be once more with him. The time of our separation is not long, for in this life we are all like travelers on a journey, hurrying on to the same shelter. While one has reached his rest, another arrives, another hurries on, but one and the same end awaits them all. He has outstripped us on the way, but we shall all travel the same road, and the same hostel awaits us all.

Those who lost all their worldly possessions in the sack of Rome, if they owned their possessions as they had been taught by the apostle who himself was poor without, but rich within—that is to say, if they used the world as though not using it—they could say in the words of Job, heavily tried but not overcome, Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has happened: Blessed be the name of the Lord. Like a good servant, Job counted the will of his Lord his greatest possession and through obedience to that will his soul was enriched. It didn’t grieve him while he was still alive to lose those goods which he was shortly going to have to leave at his death. But as to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, still hang on to them with a somewhat moderate attachment to them, they have discovered by the pain of losing these things how much they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of their own making. In the words of the apostle quoted above, They have pierced themselves through with many sorrows.^[1] For it was well that they who had so long despised these verbal admonitions should receive the teaching of experience. For when the apostle says They that will be rich fall into temptation,^[2] and so on, what he blames in riches is not the possession of them but the desire for them. For elsewhere he says, Charge those who are rich in this world not to be high-minded or trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.^[3] They who were making such a use of their property have been consoled for light losses by great gains, and have had more pleasure in those possessions which they have securely laid past, by freely giving them away, than grief in which those they entirely lost by an anxious and selfish hoarding of them. For nothing could perish on earth except what they would be ashamed to carry away from the earth. Our Lord’s injunction runs, Do not lay up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through or steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.^[4] And they who have listened to this injunction have proved in the time of tribulation how well they were advised in not despising this most trustworthy teacher and most faithful and mighty guardian of their treasure. For if many were glad that their treasure was stored in places which the enemy chanced not to light upon, how much better founded was the joy of those who, by the counsel of their God, have fled with their treasure to a citadel which no enemy can possibly reach!

Job did not sin before God. That is, he was pure from sins committed with his tongue or in his thoughts, and he praised God by means of words in accordance with his thoughts. Actually he did not charge God with insanity, that is, Job does not accuse the will of God or scorn the economy of the Creator, and he does not perceive insanity in the events that had occurred. He did not believe that the righteous are abandoned into the hands of sinners.

The mind that grieves over testing must be wary and diligent lest the temptation prompt it from within to utter words that are forbidden or to complain about being tested. It should be vigilant that the fire that tests it like gold not turn everything into mere chaff by the excesses of a lawless tongue.