Fathers

Job 9

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Then Job answered, “Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God? If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand. God who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against him and prospered? He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger. He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble. He commands the sun and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars. He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea. He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south. He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number. Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him. He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him. Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’ “God will not withdraw his anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him. How much less will I answer him, And choose my words to argue with him? Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would make supplication to my judge. If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice. For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause. He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness. If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me?’ Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me. Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse. I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life. “It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked. If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it? “Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away. They see no good. They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey. If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;’ I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that you will not hold me innocent. I will be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain? If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye, yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes will abhor me. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment. There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both. Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid; then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.

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What the Fathers say

Job 9:7

Western Saints

Gregory the Dialogist

Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and shutteth up the stars as under a seal. Now sometimes in Holy Writ by the title of 'sun,' we have the brightness of the Preachers represented, as it is said by John, And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair. For at the end of time the sun is exhibited 'like sackcloth of hair,' in that the shining life of them that preach is set forth before the eyes of the lost as hard and contemptible. …

Morals on the Book of Job, Book IX ↗

Thomas Aquinas

Finally, he proceeds to the heavenly bodies, which also result from divine power. Consider that as the nature of the earth is to be unmoved and at rest, so the nature of the heavens is constant motion. Just as then the power of the earth can be overcome clearly by divine power through the motion which appears in it, so the power of a heavenly body is shown to be overcome clearly by divine power the fact that the motion is impeded of the rising and the setting of the sun and the other stars. …

Commentary on Job ↗