Therefore, Zophar says, I burn inside and am confused in my mind, because you assert that you are enduring these calamities from God, the judge, for no reason, when no evil can be expected from God. I hear censure that insults me, and a spirit beyond my understanding answers me. I will listen to you while you reproach and correct me. For I do not have to scold one who has been placed in calamities by chance. I can really say what is more appropriate about God. In fact, you could not be punished so by him if you were not aware of your evils and guilty of many crimes.

In this passage Zophar speaks impudently and seriously insults Job. By scorning him, as the other two friends had already done, Zophar also defamed him for the following reason. After the beginning, after human beings came into existence, they felt joy and happiness in the fall of the impious and the destruction of the iniquitous. Zophar wants to include Job among them as well, according to what he says afterwards. Actually, forgetting that great number of people, Zophar addresses his words to a single person.

The pride of the hypocrite is said to mount up as high as the heavens, when his highmindedness has the appearance of leading a heavenly life. And his head, as it were, reaches to the clouds, when the leading part, that is, his intellect, is thought to equal the merits of the saints that have gone before. Yet he perishes at last like his own dung, because at his death, when he is led to torments, being full of the dung of evil habits, he is trampled underfoot by evil spirits. . . . It generally happens that the life of the hypocrite is discovered by all people at the end to be damnable, for it to be made apparent by plainer marks of what sort it was. Those who formerly saw him happy shall then say of him when dead, Where is he? For neither is he seen here, where he was elated, nor in the rest of eternity, which he was supposed to receive. Concerning the brevity of the hypocrite’s life, it is yet further added fittingly, He will fly away like a dream and not be found; he will be chased away like a vision of the night. What else is the life of the hypocrite but the vision of a phantom that exhibits the facade that it does not possess in truth?

This means that their ruin comes suddenly, so that you may not believe that their calamity comes from a natural condition but that it is in accordance with a divine and extraordinary power. Moreover, this concerns not only their crimes but also their sacrifices. If they offer any, they turn out to be useless. Let his inferiors, Zophar says, destroy his children. This sentence also demonstrates clearly that the blow comes from God, because inferior people prevail on those who are stronger, and those who are outcast prevail on those who have power. ^[1] A MISERY GREATER THAN DEATH. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: Their bones are full of marrow and will lie down in the dust with them. By the marrow that is inside the bones, the author signifies prosperity. That is, from his former prosperity he will pass to a profound abasement, so that he will not be inferior to the dead. ^[1]

They have theories that are not sweet but as the gall of asps, that is, evil; and those theories come from the wine of their doctrine. For their wine comes from the vine of Sodom.^[1] The gall of asps is in the belly of the heretics and those who declare impious dogmas contrary to truth.

The hypocrite desires to know the revelations of God, yet [he does] not to practice them. He would speak sagely but not live so. For this reason, then, he does not do what he knows, and even that which he knows he loses. For since he does not unite wholesome practice with his knowledge, despising purity of right practice, he loses the knowledge also. Therefore, the riches of the sacred law that he swallowed in reading, he vomits in forgetting. And God casts them out of his belly, in that what he fails to do is by a righteous judgment rooted altogether out of his memory. God will not allow him to keep the precepts of God with his words only, but which he did not practice in his life. Hence it is said by the prophet, But to the wicked God said, ‘Why should you declare my statutes? For what reason should you take my covenant in your mouth?’^[1] If at any time the hypocrite should seem to retain these words of instruction in his mouth until the end, he will be condemned the more on those very grounds; whereas not even a bad person is ever deprived of the good gift of God. For it is written, To those who remember his commandments.^[2]. . . He then that keeps his commandments in mind but never does them, holds in the words of instruction the very sentences by which he is condemned.

What other riches are unjustly gathered but those which are in their speeches? Indeed, they are unjustly gathered. But God, in his benevolence, does not allow those mad people to keep forever their unjustly gathered riches. He will cause them to vomit them up again. . . . The angel, in fact, through the action and benevolence of God, drags him out of his wickedly built house, that is, the church of those who behave wickedly; it is their house. But the angel drags him out of his house.

They will not rejoice on the division of the rivers,^[1] the streams flowing with honey and curds. These words mean that those rivers were divided on Mount Calvary, and the streams derived from the rivers signify the gifts of the Spirit communicated by the revelation of the Gospel.

For he has broken down the houses of many poor men, and he has plundered a dwelling, though he did not build it. His possessions provide no security. He has broken down, that is, has shattered mercilessly [their houses], has carried off all their properties and has not given them back. In fact, he has not mended this situation, that is, has not returned what he has stolen. But, as he has carried off the properties of the poor and has not restored them, so his own possessions will not be saved either. He shall not be saved by his desire. There is nothing remaining of his provisions; therefore his goods shall not flourish. The impious, Zophar says, will not save himself through his desire, and then he will not have any provision left, because he does not possess anything that has been left to him by his absolute misery.

Perhaps not even his goods will flourish, but they will become corrupted while still in bloom. In fact, if he appears to be full and abundant in all goods, then every need and affliction will assault him, so that he fills his belly, that is, fills his soul with every pain. Let God send upon him the fury of wrath; let him bring a torrent of pains upon him. God, by striking him with the most severe punishment, will bury him in pains as under a snowstorm.

For you may often see the bad person, who is set in earthly power, agitated with furious passion and executing all that his rage suggests. When his fury is gone, then lust directly ravages his soul. When lust is stopped for a time, his continence produces self-exaltation that immediately occupies his heart. So that others may fear him, he aims to present himself as an object of terror. But when the occasion requires that he should say anything deceitfully, he seems to lay aside the horror of his pride and flatters with an easy address. When he ceases to show himself proud, he does not dread to act deceitfully again. And so it is rightly said of him, in whose mind one vice takes the place of another, Terrible ones come and go upon him. Since all the evil habits weigh him down with their coming and going in taking each other’s place, his soul is, as it were, overrun by as many evil spirits departing and returning.

What do we understand by the heavens, but the righteous, and what by the earth, but sinners? Hence, in the Lord’s Prayer we pray, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This means that the will of our Creator, in the same way as it is accomplished in all the righteous, may be fulfilled in all sinners as well. Moreover, of the righteous it is said, The heavens declare the glory of God.^[1] To man, when he sinned, the sentence is pronounced, You are earth, and to earth you shall return. And so of this ungodly man, when dragged to that awful judgment, the heavens reveal his iniquity, and the earth rises up against him, that that man, who never spared either the good or the bad, should in that tremendous inquest have the life of the righteous and of sinners alike accusing him.

Let a day of wrath come upon him. This is the portion for the ungodly man from the Lord, and the possession of his goods appointed him by the all-seeing^[1] God. Since he did not recognize the benevolence of God while he possessed his goods, the fullness of wrath is given him as his property and reward. Therefore the bishops, when they hear in holy Scripture that God is invoked with this name, must protect the dignity of his name by taking care of the safety of their herd with watchful guard and faith, being irreprehensible in life and adorned with doctrine.

[The wrath of God strikes] both the circumcised, who act impiously against Christ, and the heretic and indeed any who are ungodly. The retribution of each is according to what has been shown above. Do you understand who is the overseer^[1] mentioned here? God is called overseer, and his bishops must endeavor in every way to put into practice his model, if they are good. And as one who emulates a royal model is honored, because he has emulated it in a proper way, so the blessed bishop who meditates upon the true bishop and imitates him also becomes like a god among humans. He really has in himself that bishop and has made himself a bishop in Jesus Christ.