These words mean, I do not reprove you for defending the role of God or to say the truth that was needed. However, you should not have condemned me, and, in fact, it is possible to plead in favor of God without allowing, at the same time, Job to be exposed to accusations.

To whom have you given counsel? Perhaps to him that has no wisdom? To give counsel to one who is foolish is an act of charity. To give it to one that is wise is an act of ostentation. But to pretend to give it to Wisdom itself is an act of perversity. Those visitors, who we have said are like those today who insist on their own way, were by their mode of speech playing toward ostentation rather than usefulness. Thus it is yet further rightly added against Bildad, And you have displayed your prudence overmuch. One who is rightly prudent does not overextend oneself because according to Paul’s declaration, he seeks not to be wise above the degree that he ought to be wise. But to one who is excessively prudent, the result is imprudence. For when prudence is carried beyond due measure, it is made to turn off the path on one side or another. Excessive prudence becomes evident when one seeks to appear more full of prudence than anyone else. Those who do not have the art to be wise in moderation are prone to mouth off with foolishness.

Behold, giants groan under the waters. After proposing the division that he made between power and wisdom, Job puts forward his evidence. He distinguishes the deep and the underworld. Both those that live in the deep of the sea, even if they are of tremendous size (and for this reason he calls them giants, which we understand as wild beasts) and those in the underworld itself (which prevents the sight of viewers as if in a thick fog)—both these realms remain constantly within the realm of God’s power and exposed to his eyes. Behold, giants groan under the waters. The Greek text reads, Will the giants receive the service of the midwife under the waters, and in their neighbor? This must be interpreted as asking whether the dead will resurrect if they are under the waters on earth. In saying they will resurrect, the thought is that it will be as if they had the service of a midwife. It is interpreted according to the metaphor of a woman giving birth. The meaning is this, The art of midwifery takes the child out of the womb. If so, is it possible to raise the dead from the underworld, when this realm belongs only to God? The underworld is naked before him. It is impossible, he says, to hold back the dead when God wants to resurrect them. Only at his command [the earth] is forced to throw up those which it has devoured. There is no cover to perdition. Even though [the underworld] is covered by the thickness of darkness, it appears transparently before the eyes of the Almighty.

He stretches out the north wind upon nothing, and he upon nothing hangs the earth. Indeed the support of the earth is nothing but an understructure, but it is suspended and is sustained by divine will. Binding water in his clouds, and the cloud is not dispersed under it. In fact, if he does not order the clouds to rain, they do not release rain on earth in the quantity that has been ordered by him. He constrains the elements with his purposes hidden, stretching out his cloud upon them. Heaven is often called the throne of God in holy Scripture. Air is placed before the face of heaven. Therefore, he says that God, by containing the air and expanding the clouds, does not allow them to release rain, if not in the measure that he knows to be convenient and useful. ^[1] THE ORDER GIVEN BY GOD. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: So God has gathered the waters that were spread on earth at the beginning and has imposed a limit on them. His command has surrounded them like a circle, so that they might not exceed it. He has set a boundary between light and darkness. This means that he has ordered the light and the darkness to occupy their given times in good harmony and not to prevail on one another. ^[1]

The pillars of heaven tremble and are frightened at his nod. We interpret the word pillars as the stability that is permanent only in the nature of angels, because they are not only constantly persistent in holiness but also splendid in the glory of eternal blessedness. Indeed about the future immobility of humanity, the Son of God said, Those who prove victorious I will make into pillars in the sanctuary of my God.^[1] But also the church, which is the congregation of all saints, is said to be the pillar and foundation of truth thanks to its eternal stability in the Lord.. . . By his power he stilled the seas. At the beginning of Genesis we read that he did this. And his understanding struck down the proud. We are not entirely certain whether the proud one is specifically the devil. He, in fact, was the first one struck down by God when he drove him out of that sublime and blessed place in heaven. This the prophet said: You have brought down the proud as one that is slain.^[2] From the spiritual point of view, we can certainly interpret the seas as the people of the Jews and the nations of the Gentiles. . . . Indeed from the sea, that is, from the people of the Jews, the gospel of Christ began because the new law [of Jesus] came out of Zion and reached the sea of the Gentiles.

These words eloquently signify the perceptible serpent that must be annihilated by Christ’s death. He calls Satan a fleeing and deserting serpent in order to indicate his flight from the company of the heavenly powers, and also because he hoped to escape the punishment of his crime.

What is meant in this place by the designation of the ways but the Lord’s modes of acting? Hence the Lord also says by the prophet, For my ways are not as your ways.^[1] Accordingly, in telling of the advent of the Lord, he described the ways of God in part. His method of acting by which he created us was one thing; that by which he redeemed us another. Thus of those things that touch upon the Lord’s way of acting and make light of by comparison with the final judgment, he says, Lo, these things are spoken for part of his ways. He also calls this a little drop of his words. For whatever is high, whatever is terrible within this life, these things we are brought to know by the contemplation of God, as from the vast ocean of the secrets of heaven, its refreshment wells out to us like a slight drop of the liquid element above. And who will be able to look on the thunder of his majesty? It is as though he expressed himself in these plain words: If we endure the wonders of his humility and the thundering and dreadful advent of his majesty, with what courage do we meet life?