While his three friends remained silent about his words, the blessed Job, by linking himself with what had been said before, adds the words that follow. Indeed he had spoken his previous words as a prologue to what follows now.

What he first calls iniquity, afterward he calls falsehood. All falsehood is iniquity, and all iniquity is falsehood. For whatever is at variance with truth is surely at odds with justice. But there is a wide difference between to speak and to meditate, which he adds afterward. For sometimes it is a worse thing to meditate falsehood than to speak it, because speaking it is very frequently a matter of being impetuous, but to meditate on it shows deliberate wickedness. And who could be ignorant of the great differernce when distinguishing sin, whether one tells a lie inconsiderately or deliberately? But the holy person who perfectly adheres to the truth would neither lie deliberately, nor would he do so impetuously.

I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go. That means, I will not surrender, nor will the perseverance and resolution of my soul yield, but I will patiently and bravely bear my calamity. ^[1] A DECLARATION OF INNOCENCE. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: My heart does not reproach me for any of my days. Job has no resentment in himself, and his conscience does not reproach him for any shameful act that he might have committed. ^[1]

This is what Job means, one who is full of iniquity has neither liberty to express himself nor to say what I say now. Rather, he has been taken away and stays silent. On the contrary, I did not experience that, but I speak and answer. But the same does not happen to those who are iniquitous.

What hope, he says, does the impious have, even though he has lived so far? With what sort of assurance does he expect any salvation from God like that by which I trust to be saved? How will he confidently invoke God, after falling into misfortune, as if his prayers should be really heard?

I will teach you through the hand of God. He says that he will describe to them with his teaching the afflictions that are given to the hypocrites through the hand of God. In order to show his full knowledge of the things that he will describe, he adds a full account of them. They cannot ignore what he is going to relate. The Greek text reads, I will announce to you the things that are in the hand of God, the things that are with the Almighty, and I will not lie.

He describes what is likely to happen to the ungodly. Admittedly, things do not always go in this manner for them. Some of them, indeed, preserve their prosperity until the end of their life, as he himself, in his quandary, has taught his friends in the previous chapters. Therefore, he calls slaughter the kind of death that is inflicted by enemies, and death the one that comes suddenly and prematurely.

Silver used to be interpreted as the clarity of sacred Scripture. As it is elsewhere said, The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth. And because there are those who long to have the Word of God not inwardly in the exemplifying of it, but externally in the displaying of it, therefore it is said by the prophet, All those who are clothed in silver are cut off, referring to those who by the word of God do not fill themselves with the interior refreshment but array themselves in the outward exhibition. Hence their silver, that is, the word of heretics, is compared with dust, because on matters touching the holy Scripture, there may be something that they know, but they toil and strain from the coveting of earthly applause. And these also pile up clothing like clay, because they loosely make up testimonies of holy Scripture in a dabbling way, where they are able to defend themselves. The oppressors shall pile up silver indeed, but the just will wear it, because the person who is full of right faith, which used to be accounted to the saints for righteousness, cohesively gathers together those self-same testimonies of holy Scripture that the heretic piles up deductively. And from there, the just strikes home at the obstinacy of the other’s error.

The scorching wind shall carry him off and take him away. Who is it that is here called the scorching wind? None other than the evil spirit who stirs up the flames of diverse lusts in the heart that he may drag it to an eternity of punishments. And so the scorching wind is said to carry off the bad people, because the plotter, the evil spirit, inflames a person who is drawn toward evil and drags him when dying to torments. . . .

And as a whirlwind shall carry him out of his place. The place of the wicked is the gratification of the temporal life and the enjoyment of the flesh. Therefore, every single individual is in a sense carried out of his place by a whirlwind. He is overwhelmed with terror on the last day, severed from all gratifications. Regarding this same last day, it is immediately added, and rightly, For he shall let loose upon him and not spare. God, as often as he chastises the sinner by smiting him, lets loose the scourge, precisely that he may spare him. But when, by punishing him, he brings his life to an end while remaining in sin, he lets loose the scourge and does not spare. For the same one who lets loose the scourge in order that he might spare will one day let it loose with this in view—that he may not spare. For in this life the Lord is able more to spare in proportion as he scourges those who are in waiting. This is what he himself said to John by the voice of the angel, As many as I love, I rebuke and chastise;^[1] and as it is elsewhere spoken, For whom the Lord loves, he chastises.^[2] But, in reverse, it is written of the scourge of condemnation, The wicked is trapped in the work of his own hands.^[3] According to Jeremiah, when the Lord sees the multitude transgressing irreclaimably, whom he now no longer regards as sons under discipline but as enemies under unmitigated scourging, he says:For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with a cruel chastisement.^[4]. . .

Then he says, He shall bind up his hands over him. To bind up the hands is to establish the practices of his life in uprightness. Hence Paul also says, Therefore lift up the loosed hands and the unstrung knees. While, then, they behold the destruction of another, they are made to turn back to the conscience. There they are to remind themselves of their own acts, by which one person is carried to torments and another is freed from torments. And so he binds up his hands over him, because he observes in the punishment of another what to be afraid of. While he sees one living in transgression as smitten, he binds fast with the sinews of righteousness his own loose practices. And so it is brought to pass that he who, being a bad person while living, had drawn numbers into transgression by the seductiveness of sin, may in dying recover some from transgression by the terribleness of their torments. . . .

And he shall hiss upon him, beholding his place. What is expressed in the hissing other than the wrenching of wonder? But if in the hissing there is some other meaning sought, when the sinner dies, those who witness his death draw tight the mouth in hissing, in the sense that they are converted to those spiritual words that they themselves had condemned, so that they henceforth begin to believe and to teach that which before, while they perceived the wicked person thriving, they earlier had not believed. For it very often happens that the mind of the weak is the more unsteadied from the hearing of the truth precisely by seeing the despisers of the truth flourishing. But when just punishment takes away the unjust, it keeps others away from wickedness.