Fathers

Job 35

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

Moreover Elihu answered, “Do you think this to be your right, or do you say, ‘My righteousness is more than God’s,’ that you ask, ‘What advantage will it be to you? What profit will I have, more than if I had sinned?’ I will answer you, and your companions with you. Look to the skies, and see. See the skies, which are higher than you. If you have sinned, what effect do you have against him? If your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him? If you are righteous, what do you give him? Or what does he receive from your hand? Your wickedness may hurt a man as you are, and your righteousness may profit a son of man. “By reason of the multitude of oppressions they cry out. They cry for help by reason of the arm of the mighty. But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night, who teaches us more than the animals of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?’ There they cry, but no one answers, because of the pride of evil men. Surely God will not hear an empty cry, neither will the Almighty regard it. How much less when you say you don’t see him. The cause is before him, and you wait for him! But now, because he has not visited in his anger, neither does he greatly regard arrogance. Therefore Job opens his mouth with empty talk, and he multiplies words without knowledge.”

About · Privacy · Credits · Support VRSZ

What the Fathers say

Job 35:10

Western Saints

Gregory the Dialogist

And He said not, Where is God, Who made me? It is the practice of Holy Scripture, to pass suddenly from the singular to the plural, and to turn itself from the plural to the singular. Whence Eliu, when saying, They will cry and wail, did not subjoin, They said not, Where is God? but, He said not, Where is God? For, coming from the plural to the singular, he suddenly passed over to the person of each of the weak. …

Morals on the Book of Job, Book XXVI ↗

Thomas Aquinas

Then he turns himself to rejecting the other thing Job said, "what is right does not please you," which is repugnant to divine wisdom. Surely this wisdom first appears in the creation of things, and so he says, "And Job did not say," because he does not think that good things pleased God, "where is the God who made me?" For God made things only for the good, as we read in Genesis, "God saw that it was good, etc." Therefore, it is clear that good pleases God. …

Commentary on Job ↗