Fathers

Job 19

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Then Job answered, “How long will you torment me, and crush me with words? You have reproached me ten times. You aren’t ashamed that you attack me. If it is true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach, know now that God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with his net. “Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. I cry for help, but there is no justice. He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass, and has set darkness in my paths. He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. He has plucked my hope up like a tree. He has also kindled his wrath against me. He counts me among his adversaries. His troops come on together, build a siege ramp against me, and encamp around my tent. “He has put my brothers far from me. My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have forgotten me. Those who dwell in my house and my maids consider me a stranger. I am an alien in their sight. I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer. I beg him with my mouth. My breath is offensive to my wife. I am loathsome to the children of my own mother. Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me. All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me. My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. “Have pity on me. Have pity on me, you my friends; for the hand of God has touched me. Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh? “Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! That with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth. After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh, whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger. “My heart is consumed within me. If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ because the root of the matter is found in me, be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”

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What the Fathers say

Job 19:6

Western Saints

Gregory the Dialogist

Know now at least that God hath afflicted me with no just judgment. O, how hard does the voice of the righteous man sound, suffering under the infliction of the rod! Which same, however, not pride, but grief gave vent to! Now he is not righteous, who gives up righteousness under sorrow; and blessed Job, because he had a meek spirit, did not sin even by a hard word. …

Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIV ↗

Thomas Aquinas

After he begins with these things which concern the refutation of his friends, he goes on to pursue his chief proposition with the intention of showing what they were saying is false: that present adversities always arise because of past sins. Immediately at the beginning he draws an unfitting conclusion from this supposition saying, "At least now, understand that God has not have afflicted me with right judgment," as if to say: If adversities only arise because of sins, the judgment of God by which he afflicted me gravely when I did …

Commentary on Job ↗