You are comforters but very wicked ones. No word of yours is for the good, but they are all for the bad. You teach, you give advice, and you propose not how ordeals must be avoided, but how [new] ordeals will be obtained from affliction! [You do not teach] how a storm must be abated but how harmful agitations can be raised from peace.

Since Eliphaz speaks so, as if the matter were of extraordinary importance, and talks as if his speech derived from the wisdom of the ancestors, Job also resumes the argument he had used at the beginning. Is what you say not evident, he says? Therefore, since you speak superficially and utter what comes to your mind without checking your words, do not be annoyed with me if I express the thoughts of my mind.

Job has phrased this in the form of a question and not in order to look for an argument. This means Will I really join words together against you? Or will I really shake my head at you? Not at all! It is convenient for the righteous to take upon himself the afflictions of others and not to trample underfoot or to exaggeratedly insist wickedly, as you do concerning my torments.

It is sometimes necessary that wicked minds, which are incapable of being corrected by human preaching, should have the comfort of God desired for them in a spirit of kindness; and while this is done with great earnestness in love, plainly not the punishment but the correction of the guilty person is the thing aimed at, and it is shown to be a prayer rather than a curse. In these words blessed Job is shown to aim at this, that the friends, who didn’t know how to sympathize with his grief through charity, might learn by experience how they ought to have pitied the affliction of another. Those subdued by grief may learn to draw from their own suffering a better way to minister consolation to others. They would then live ever more healthfully within as they are made more sensitive to frailty without.

Your words cruelly pierce me, because you endeavor to present me as a false witness before God, whose wrath has torn me. Even in the middle of my mourning, where the loss of the children and cattle had dragged me, bodily pains invaded me. And I certainly remained silent, but he struck me with ominous reports and harsh news. ^[1] JOB’S INIQUITOUS ANGEL. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: God has given me up to an iniquitous angel. These words are said because it is believed that an angel accompanies each human being. Job calls his angel iniquitous because of the effects of Job’s misfortunes that he observes, just as David calls the angel evil who kills the firstborn of the Egyptians.^{[1] [2]}

God locked me beside the iniquitous and delivered me into the hands of the impious, that is, beside the devil and his angels. But [this sentence] must also be interpreted as a reference to Christ when he was delivered into the hands of the Jews. I, who was once rich, was suddenly trampled underfoot. He held my neck, broke me and set me as a sign, that is, from rich he became poor, or as Christ, who, from being God, was born a man. He abandoned me to his spears, wounded my loins and did not spare them, and he scattered my entrails on the ground. The spears mentioned in this passage can be seen as the seizures of pain that Job suffered, but they must also be interpreted as the blasphemies that Christ suffered from the Jews.. . . The words he wounded my loins must also be read as a reference to Christ. In fact, the Jews persecuted the apostles to such a degree that they wounded with the injury of infidelity and the denial of Christ those [holy men] who were born, in a sense, from the loins of Christ’s doctrine. Peter, in fact, said, I do not know the man.^[1]

I have suffered this without committing iniquity. You have a good reason to be upset, because there was no cause for such a torment. I have suffered this. Job is knowingly in pain against his merits. Therefore, he does not want the fact that he has been given to torments to remain hidden, but he desires what he suffers to be under the light. Job has no desire for the memory of his passion to be buried in oblivion but wants what he suffers to reach everybody’s ears, because he is certain of the innocence of his life. . . . Therefore it is especially reserved for the righteous that their passions and their deaths not be hidden in the course of their struggles.

Yet this voice may together with blessed Job suitably apply to each one of us as well; for every person who aims at human praises in what he does, seeks a witness on earth. But he that is eager to please almighty God by his deeds takes into account that he has a witness in heaven. It often happens that inconsiderate people find fault with even the very best things in us; but one who has a witness in heaven has no need to fear human reproofs. Hence it is further added, My friends are full of words; my eye pours out tears to God. For what is denoted by the eye but the intent of the heart? As it is written, If your eye is good, your whole body shall be full of light.^[1] For when anything is done with a good intention, the enacting of that intention gains no favor in the sight of God. And so when friends are full of words, that is, when the very same persons deny they are joined with us in faith, the eye must pour out tears to God, so that the whole bent of our heart may run out into the piercing of interior love and lift itself up to the things of the interior. Being forced back by external reproaches, it is driven to turn back within, lest it should vanish. . . . As if it were expressed in plain words, As in all that I say, I am heard, so would that I heard all that is said concerning me. But this can never be brought about in this life, because there is a great obstruction before the eyes of our heart, blocking from our sight the subtle nature of God, even our mere frailty by itself. But we shall then see him with clarity by whom we are now searchingly beheld. When this frailty is laid aside, we will receive that grace of inward contemplation of which Paul says, For then shall I know, as also I am known.^[2] Hence blessed Job, seeing that that knowledge can never be in the fullest way perfected here, groans indeed over the blindness of the present life, yet consoles himself by life’s brevity, saying, For when a few years have come, I shall go the way from which I shall not return. Everything that passes is short, even though it should seem slow in being finished, but in the way of death we go and do not return by it, not because we are not brought back by rising again to the life of the flesh but because we do not come again to the labors of this mortal life or to earn rewards by our labors.