Fathers

Job 30

Tap a verse to read the Fathers. Press and hold, then drag, to make a card.

“But now those who are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I considered unworthy to put with my sheep dogs. Of what use is the strength of their hands to me, men in whom ripe age has perished? They are gaunt from lack and famine. They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of waste and desolation. They pluck salt herbs by the bushes. The roots of the broom tree are their food. They are driven out from among men. They cry after them as after a thief; So that they dwell in frightful valleys, and in holes of the earth and of the rocks. They bray among the bushes. They are gathered together under the nettles . They are children of fools, yes, children of wicked men. They were flogged out of the land. “Now I have become their song. Yes, I am a byword to them. They abhor me, they stand aloof from me, and don’t hesitate to spit in my face. For he has untied his cord, and afflicted me; and they have thrown off restraint before me. On my right hand rise the rabble. They thrust aside my feet, They cast up against me their ways of destruction. They mar my path. They promote my destruction without anyone’s help. As through a wide breach they come. They roll themselves in amid the ruin. Terrors have turned on me. They chase my honor as the wind. My welfare has passed away as a cloud. “Now my soul is poured out within me. Days of affliction have taken hold of me. In the night season my bones are pierced in me, and the pains that gnaw me take no rest. My garment is disfigured by great force. It binds me about as the collar of my tunic. He has cast me into the mire. I have become like dust and ashes. I cry to you, and you do not answer me. I stand up, and you gaze at me. You have turned to be cruel to me. With the might of your hand you persecute me. You lift me up to the wind, and drive me with it. You dissolve me in the storm. For I know that you will bring me to death, To the house appointed for all living. “However doesn’t one stretch out a hand in his fall? Or in his calamity therefore cry for help? Didn’t I weep for him who was in trouble? Wasn’t my soul grieved for the needy? When I looked for good, then evil came. When I waited for light, darkness came. My heart is troubled, and doesn’t rest. Days of affliction have come on me. I go mourning without the sun. I stand up in the assembly, and cry for help. I am a brother to jackals, and a companion to ostriches. My skin grows black and peels from me. My bones are burned with heat. Therefore my harp has turned to mourning, and my pipe into the voice of those who weep.

About · Privacy · Credits · Support VRSZ

What the Fathers say

Job 30:7

Western Saints

Gregory the Dialogist

Who rejoiced in the midst of the like, and reckoned there were delights under brambles. What do we understand by the name of 'brambles,' but those 'piercings' of sins, which we have already described above. Now because froward minds delight in wickednesses, which they should have bewailed, all heretics uplift themselves with vain joy in proportion as they gain power for worse acts; and they 'reckon there are delights under the brambles,' because they lift up the froward mind to joy, from the same cause that they bear the thorns of …

Morals on the Book of Job, Book XX ↗

Thomas Aquinas

It even seemed pleasant to them when they could find such places to live, and so he says, "they are happy in places like this," as though even they did not have an abundance of these sorts of places. If at times they happen to find more comfortable places, they reckoned this as voluptuous, and so he then says, "and to live under briars," in the shade of small trees, "they think voluptuous," because such a place was more comfortable to lie in than the one they had before. …

Commentary on Job ↗