Today also my speech is bitter, that is, my words happen to be harsh and irksome to both our ears. In a different sense [we may interpret the passage as] you, indeed, to use harsher speech against you, drive me with your words.

Then Job answered and said, ‘Yes, I know that my accusation comes from my hands.’ This means, I carry along with me the evidence that accuses me. I draw from myself the demonstration of my afflictions. His hand has been made heavy upon me, and I groan over me. If it were possible, he says, to discuss my punishments with him, it would also be possible to find them out. If only I could plead my case in justice, he says, and meet him and learn what he would have answered me! See how he obtained exactly what he desired. That is, in fact, what occurs at the end of the book. I wanted to know what he would have said to me and whether he would have punished me just the same; and, by saying so, I had no intention of condemning any injustice on his part.

We bewail our sins when we begin to weigh them. We weigh them the more exactly when more anxiously we bewail them. By our lamentations it rises up more perfectly in our hearts that the severity of God threatens those who commit sin. What will be those reproofs on the children of perdition, what terror, what the abhorrence of the unappeasable majesty? Great things shall the Lord then, being angry, declare to the lost, as great as he permits them of justice to undergo. . . .

Who else except the Mediator between God and humankind, the man Christ Jesus, is denoted by the title of equity? Concerning whom it is written, Who of God is made to us wisdom and righteousness.^[1] And whereas this same righteousness came into this world against the ways of sinners, we get the better of our old enemy, by whom we were held captive. So let him say, I do not want him to contend with me with great power or oppress me with the weight of his mightiness. Let him judge me justly, and my judgment will come to victory. In other words, for the correction of my ways let him send his incarnate Son. Then by the sentence of my absolution, I will turn out as a victor over the plotting foe.

If the only begotten Son of God had so remained invisible in the strength of divine nature as not to have admitted anything derived from our weakness, when could weak people ever have found the access of grace to him? For the weight of his greatness, being considered, would rather have oppressed than aided things. Yet he agreed with us by assuming our weakness, that he might elevate us to his own abiding strength.

The real meaning is this, Suppose I willingly submit the judgment of my actions to the eyes of the Lord. What happens to me? God is invisible in his nature. Will I look for him in those material things that are before me? He cannot be seen. He is before me, but I do not perceive him. When he moves to the left, I cannot grasp him, and when he is on the right, I cannot see him at all. These words do not mean that God passes from one place to another bodily or by moving, but they intend to show that he is present everywhere and, nonetheless, escapes our perception and cannot be comprehended by us. If I am no longer, that is, If I further extend my research, I will be out of myself and dizzy in reflection while I try to comprehend what is incomprehensible.

But he knows the way that I take. This is as if he said in plain terms, I for my own part search myself strictly and am not able to know myself thoroughly; yet he, whom I have no power to see, sees most minutely all the things that I do.

It goes on, And he will try me like gold that passes through fire. Gold in the furnace is advanced to the brightness of its nature while it loses the dross. And so like gold that passes through fire the souls of the righteous are tried. Their defects are removed through and through, and their good points are increased by the fire of tribulation.

The holy man [Job] compared himself with one who is being tested through fire as gold. This was not said out of pride. He who by the voice of God was pronounced righteous before his suffering was not out of pride being permitted to be tried in order that bad qualities might be cleared off and that excellences might be heightened. Gold is purified by fire. As he was being delivered over to suffer tribulation, he believed that he was being purified, although he had nothing in him to be purified. . . .

My foot has held fast to his steps. It is by examining the footsteps of God, so to speak, that we see how both the good and bad are governed and the righteous and unrighteous distinguished. By this means everyone [by divine Providence] may be led on day by day to better things, or one who is in rebellion against the good plunges headlong into worse.

It is of these same footsteps that the prophet said, Your goings have been seen, O God.^[1] And so we, when we behold the efficacy of his long-suffering and mercy and strive to imitate them, may follow the footsteps of his goings and thus imitate in some fashion his method of proceeding. . . .

I have kept his way and have not turned aside. For he who keeps the way and does not turn aside practices the thing on which his mind is bent. To continue to follow the temperament of one’s own mind is to fail in practice. Every day the righteous are concerned that they test their actions by the ways of truth. So they propose these as a rule to themselves, that they should not turn aside from the track of their right course.

Thus, day by day, they strive to move ahead, a step above their present position in proportion as they are being lifted up toward the summit of virtues, while they judge with heedful censure whatever there is of themselves that remain below themselves. And they are quick to press themselves wholly toward that point to which they find that they have been brought in part.

The text goes on, I have not departed from the commandment of his lips. The servant who serves well is ever intent upon the master’s facial expression in order that the things they may be asked to do, they may hear readily and strive to fulfill. In this way the minds of the righteous become bent toward almighty God. So, according to Scripture, the faithful fix their eyes on his face that reveals all that he wills, in order that they may not be at variance with his will in proportion to what they learn of that will in his revelation. When this happens, his words do not pass superfluously through their ears, but they fix these words in their hearts.

So it is added here, I have treasured in my bosom the words of his mouth. For we treasure the words of his mouth in the bosom of our heart when we hear his commandments not in a passing way but to fulfill them in practice. Thus, of the Virgin Mother herself it is written, But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Even when these same words come forth to be practiced, they are said to lie hidden in the recesses of the heart if by what is done outwardly the mind of the doer is not lifted up within. When the word conceived is carried on to the deed, human praise is aimed within, for the word of God assuredly is not hidden in the bosom of the mind. Why then, blessed man, do you examine yourself with so much earnestness, and why do you take yourself to task with so much anxiety?

He declares the reason by which he walks in the narrow path of God without his feet ever turning aside. This compels him to be the dedicated guardian of his precepts, I conceived with my mind, he says, this esteem for God, because he is the only one for whom this name [of God] is truly fitting. As for those who are called gods, he does not accept any of those who are called gods, who do not participate in his power. For him everything is easy to do and nobody can oppose his force and will.

This unexpected disaster, he says, did not happen according to human logic. I discern that this blow comes from the hand of God. And he is right in speaking of the darkness that covers my face, because this darkness is not ordinary darkness but is of his own dejection.