Notes on Job

1Origen’s expositions on Job open at chapter 1: "Did you not fence what is outside him?" How do you know the fence is there? Our adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to swallow. He came round Job wanting the same work; later, once authority was given, he did it. From being blocked he learned that everything was fenced, and said, "You fenced what is inside him and what is outside him." Whatever is not handed to the devil, you have fenced.

While one messenger still spoke, another told Job that his sons and daughters were eating and drinking at their eldest brother’s house; "a great wind from the desert struck the four corners of the house; it fell on your children, and they died. I alone escaped to tell you." Camels fell to horsemen, donkeys and ox-teams to captors; the sheep he hated, so he brought fire on them. He also plotted against the sons and waited for a moment to destroy them. Had he found them reading, he would not have touched the house. Had he found them praying, he could do nothing. Opportunity came in drunkenness and a drinking-party. Note the spirit at the corners of the house: hypocrites pray in the broad places of the corners, and everyone off the straight road uses corners. A broad corner is much, loosened wickedness.

Chapter 2: "The Lord said to the devil, From where do you come?" God saw Satan ashamed and distressed; when questioning shows him ungrateful, God convicts the wrongdoer, as he convicted Cain. "After time had advanced, his wife said to him." See the craft: attack comes when long endurance has already weakened strength. Weakness is double — the bearer grows weaker by length of time, and hope is more nearly abandoned. Do not look first at the fact that she is a wife, but at what she advises. People now should weigh the manner of counsel, not the dignity of the person. A wife is to help, not to trip.

She asks, "Until when will you endure?" The devil saves the strongest device for last. "Would that you had taken her too! Would that you had buried her with the children!" Some say the words are not even hers, but the adversary speaking through her shape — unless calamity truly overturned her. Likely this was not the first counsel; she had heard harder things often. Diabolic deceit remembers Eve: what brought down the first human may prevail here too. Wretched fool — Eve found one weaker than the belly and sowed her venom; this man you see philosophizing and mastering nature itself. Loss of goods, untimely death of children, unconsolable bodily torment, and long time did not bend him. Will words master the one events could not catch? Why loosen the athlete’s hands? Say with the Apostle, "Yet a little, yet a little." "Say some word against the Lord, and die" — after the tragedy has been told exactly—

2—to finish the telling, she brings the shameless counsel. She does not even say openly, "Blaspheme." Evil advisers dare not introduce counsel uncovered. What are you saying, woman? One ought to propitiate and reconcile — and you advise provocation? If God did these things, entreat him; do not blaspheme. And how is it clear that I die as a beloved one? See how she held blasphemy: as if she thought it could bring death on her at once.

"If we received good things from the Lord’s hand, shall we not also bear the bad?" Struck from every side, the blessed man stood more securely. Countless arrows did not make him yield; he emptied the devil’s quiver and did not fall. Like an excellent pilot he was not sunk when the sea raged, and not careless when it was calm; in both seasons he kept the same skill. Wealth did not puff him up, poverty did not crush him; fair weather did not leave him slack, and nearly total ruin did not shake his courage. Let rich and poor hear: the story helps both prosperity and calamity. Handling both weapons, the contestant of piety — crown-bearer of the inhabited world — raised a trophy in each and met every kind of demonic war.

As a soldier trained for night fighting, walls, land, sea, bow, spear, sling, and javelin conquers everywhere, so this noble man bore every trial with courage: poverty, hunger, disease, pain, loss of children, friends, enemies, wife, and servants. No human calamity failed to empty itself into that body; still he rose above every net and higher than the devil’s reeds. More marvelous still: everything came at once, in excess, under one blow — not little by little. Other people rarely meet all together. Poverty may leave health; poverty and disease may still leave a consoling wife as a harbor; if not such a wife, still not one advising ruin; if children die, not all at once; if at once, not by such a death; if by such a death, still comforting friends; if not comforters, still not insulting; if insulting, still not servants reproaching and spitting in the face; if that, still not such disease on a dunghill without shelter or a hand stretched out. Job endured all of it.

"Each came from his own country: Eliphaz king of the Temanites, Baldad tyrant of the Saucheans, Sophar king of the Minaeans." Friendly presence; friendly exhortation. Name-glosses: Eliphaz — "God scattered me," or "contempt of my God"; Teman — their eclipse; Sophar — watcher or contempt; Baldad — aging and glorious; Saucheans — idle talk. The three friends, hearing all the evils that had come on him, came each from his own land. Why so late? First, they lived in different countries; after a long time many perhaps heard, but the

3paradox of the calamity also seemed unbelievable — Job on a dunghill and uncared for. They waited to confirm the report through more witnesses, or to send and see if it was true; time was spent that way. Once they knew the truth, as kings about to travel they first had to set their houses in order and appoint deputies. That occupied them and delayed them. Had they not been deeply beloved and righteous, they would not have left countries and kingdoms to visit, but would have sent others. One may also see a divine arrangement in the delay: since the friends’ dialogue ends the whole contest when God speaks, recovers, and crowns the righteous man, the friends’ lateness stretches the illness so that, contending more, he may be declared more justly by God.

"They came to him with one mind to comfort and visit him." Symmachus: they arranged together to sympathize and comfort. Another stretch of time passed while they messaged one another and set a common arrival. "They sprinkled earth on their heads." "They sat beside him seven days and seven nights." Scripture does not mean continuous day-from-dawn and night-from-dusk without break. They sat the greater part of the day, withdrew for necessary needs, returned late into the night, left again, and rose early to him — the mark of genuine friends. Scripture speaks by common custom, as when Jacob served fourteen years burned by day heat and night frost without meaning he never entered a roof. Quibbling further is nonsense. Some mock Scripture as false — "How without food and sleep for so many days?" — and we are forced to answer their untimely distress.

Chapter 3 begins: the righteous man feels pain — no one denies it. Virtue is not numbness, but philosophy inside the passions. In appearance he is stung sharply in the flesh; in thought, as a God-loving man, he sees others scandalized at such sufferings, as if God’s glory were torn if the righteous endure this. When he says, "Why have you set me as your opponent in prayer?," he is not striking at God — far from it. To whom else would he petition? He means: Why, through me, Master, is your name blasphemed? He also grows dizzy lest abandonment from God be greater still. A God-loving soul suffers nothing like the suspicion of being left by God, and chooses death ten thousand times over life under that suspicion.

At the loss of goods and the sudden death of the children we heard his thanksgiving, how he schooled the wife who thought unseemly things of the Master, and how no human accident shook him. When righteous, sympathetic friends arrived, he judged it time — seeing their endurance and love — to publish the soul’s pains in a history without danger. The devil’s one aim was to make the righteous blaspheme God. Job nowhere does that; he rather speaks well and sends up thanks. He curses the day of birth, and

4desires death for the reasons already given. Toward understanding he speaks mysteries; he philosophizes about what has already happened and assures what is coming — the way holy prophets always speak. Coming to the words themselves, let us clarify the sense, guided by the same one who strengthened holy Job for the contests.

"After this Job opened his mouth." When a righteous man opens his mouth, do not attend casually; hunt the benefit in the words. Such sayings are always full of help, and a righteous mouth publishes hidden treasures. So the vessel of election writes, "My mouth has opened toward you, Corinthians," and of the Lord it is written that "opening his mouth he taught." The one witnessed to open a mouth is first taught the measures of silence. Job opens his mouth after the great trophy and those sufferings — not letting the tongue outrun devout prudence under bodily pain, but showing temperance in the voices. The witness that he opened his mouth also shows the soul’s calm and the seemliness of the words.

Chapter 19: "Until when will you make my soul weary?" Heavy loads make beasts weary; heavy words do the same to a hearer. Pressed by the harsh, insulting speech of the other two who came with Baldad, Job feels a heavy load and asks how long they will weary his soul. The Sauchean is labeled tyrant beforehand; his words are tyrannical. Nothing reaches a human soul like a hard word. Many endure bodily torments and still cannot endure speech. The perfect athlete, even weary, endures harsh words; bearing insult belongs to a great man. So the Apostle lists among his brave deeds: "Being reviled we bless, being persecuted we endure, being defamed we exhort; we have become as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all until now." Job’s book especially holds his courage and endurance — and still he feels the toil of hard words from those who came to visit.

"Know only that the Lord made me thus." What you see about me has not come from elsewhere than God. Fear: the one who brings this on me can bring it on you. "You speak against me; unashamed, you press upon me." Evil speech happens often; when the speaker does not blush, he says it to the face — not to refute or tell truth, but to reproach and insult. One must not insult those God is punishing, but mourn and fear. "Yes, in truth I have wandered; a wanderer lodges with me — to speak a word one ought not." By hypothesis he grants their view that he suffers for sins — was it then necessary to reproach him so? Even if he had done what he ought not, seeing scourges, ichor, worms, and lost goods, should they not have felt shame? Instead they tread further, without pity. "Allow that you magnify yourselves against me and leap on me with reproach" — not moderate rebuke, but leaping as if trampling. "His fortress he raised against me": under the wall of circumstance he is a fortress he cannot flee until God judges to take it down. "Look, I laugh at reproach, and I will not speak" — that is, "conquer the evil in the good." At their reproach he is thought to laugh, not to speak. Chapter 20.

5"If his gifts go up into heaven and his sacrifice touches the clouds" — even of the impious. When a heretic prays, when sacrifice rises by high-speaking, when he seems fixed firm, then he is destroyed utterly. "His prayer is reckoned to him as sin; the prayer itself is sin. "When he seems already fixed, then he is destroyed utterly." Like "the enemies of the Lord: when they are glorified and exalted, they fail as smoke." Those who see him — we of the church who see their errors — will say, "Where is he?" "Like a dream flown away, he will not be found." Such people dream and mold fantasies; they do not rest the mind on truth, and become a dream that cannot be found.

"Let lesser ones destroy his sons" — sons and disciples of the teacher of these things. "Let his hands torch pains": the deeds kindle punishment; this impious man’s hands will spend him in last pains — spoken also of the lawless one’s sons. "Gall of an asp is in his belly:" teachings not sweet but asp gall — the wine of their doctrine. "From the vine of Sodom is their vine." Asp gall sits in the belly of the heterodox and of anyone impious in doctrines opposite the truth.

"Wealth gathered unjustly will be vomited out." What wealth is that but the wealth in their words? The Good One will not let the fallen keep unjust wealth forever; he makes them vomit it. "An angel will drag him from his house" — from the badly built house that is a church of evildoers — by God’s energy and kindness. "May he not see the milking of pastures." The heterodox do not see that milking. Pastures are souls under the good Shepherd: "I am the door; if anyone enters through me he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture."

"Like tough herb, unchewed, unswallowable:" words and doctrines against God are tough and dense, with nothing sweet. As that plant cannot be swallowed even when chewed hard, so the one who wants alien enjoyments carries off no profit from the toil. "For this his good things will not bloom; when he seems filled, he is afflicted. Belongings cannot buy him salvation. "Every necessity will come upon him; wrath of anger is sent" — hortatory so we stand off from alien things. Pains come like a snowstorm. "He will not be saved from a hand of iron": not perceptible iron, but a most cutting word.

6"Let an arrow go through his body." Fired arrows wound him. "Let unburnable fire eat him." We learn a mystery of the punishment laid up, to guard ourselves from it. Material fire here is seen and burnable; that fire on sinners is invisible, burns within, is intelligible and punishing. Take the image of extreme fever: you see no fire, yet it underlies and burns the inwards. So sin-fever burns a person out. "Let a stranger maltreat his house:" the war-maker against that people was a stranger, not a proselyte, dissolving the supposed sanctuary and the city they called holy.

"Let heaven uncover his lawless deeds" — terrors from God and heaven. Job had said he was struck by God and also wronged by humans; the construction is that all came because of sins. "Let earth rise up against him." "A possession of belongings from the overseer." Overseer here names God; good bishops strive to wear that image. As one who imitates a royal image well is honored, blessed is the overseer who understands the true Overseer, zealously imitates him, and becomes as God among humans — or who has an Overseer making him truly overseer in Christ Jesus. Glory and might forever. Amen.

Chapter 21: "Looking into me, hold wonder." You claim to know why I suffer, as if God slept over sins, and dared call me a sinner justly arrived here. "They have grown old in wealth" — not newly rich, always increasing. "Their seed according to soul:" the righteous sow to the spirit and reap eternal life; the soulish do not receive the Spirit — folly to them — so their seed is according to soul, the inferior. "Their children in eyes:" all they do is to be seen by humans; children are each one’s works. Heterodox children are not in heart and good reasonings but in eyes.

"Their houses prosper:" enter a heretic synagogue and see the crowd — houses prosper. "Fear nowhere": they do not fear God while speaking of God. "A scourge from the Lord is not upon them:" if you see such a speaker healthy, sensing, sometimes worldly-prosperous, that line is fulfilled. "Their ox did not miscarry:" they farm — but Sodom, Gomorrah, Egypt. The ox bears so their wicked earth is farmed. What they conceive they carry from wickedness, not fear of God: "he travailed injustice, conceived toil, and bore lawlessness." "They remain like eternal sheep." Christ: "My sheep hear my voice, and I give them eternal life" — those are eternal sheep. The heterodox are mimics and want to imitate the

7flock of Christ — appointing their own bishops, elders, deacons, teachers, people, and catechumens — they fulfill "they remain as eternal sheep." They are not eternal sheep; they only remain as if they were. "Their children play; taking up psaltery and harp." Ours take instruments to hymn and glorify God. Their senseless children play with them. When they take up Old Testament words they laugh at law and prophets — psaltery of the law, harp of prophecy — as toys. "They rejoice with a voice of a psalm:" they say psalms of Valentinus and odes of Basilides. "In a rest of Hades they slept" — not heaven’s rest. We pray to sleep in God’s rest in the holy heavens with Christ reigning. Glory forever. Amen.

Chapter 22: "Is it not the Lord who teaches understanding and knowledge?" What the Holy Spirit administers must be written so the reader benefits. If the three friends’ words were useless, Providence would not have recorded them in Job’s book. One may be helped by looking into the doctrines, and see that the charge fails at one point only: they accuse Job of suffering for his sins, not seeing many other causes of what happens to humans. The doctrine is sound: a true teacher of virtue cannot be merely human. "The one who teaches a human knowledge" is God. "Teach me your just deeds," says the Prophet, knowing God is the true and perfect teacher. God teaches by shining on the learner’s soul and lighting the mind with his true Word. Righteous men also teach us when they have received teaching grace.

"He will enter with you into judgment." God accounts for the one under his care and convicts him — so philanthropic that, judging kindly, he lets us speak as if judged with him. So Isaiah: "Come, and let us reason, says the Lord." If you have something to convict my providence of neglect, speak; I will answer and persuade you as one worthy of condemnation.

"Is your wickedness not much? Your sins are uncountable." Eliphaz assumes this of Job. Knowing him rich, he says Job took pledges from brothers as from debtors who were not debtors — "you pledged your brothers for nothing." He intensifies another charge about taking garments — not from the naked, but from a rich man with many clothes stored. Three… then of the many

8there took a garment — but of a naked one, not only of a rich one. If someone has one tunic and, demanding what is mine, I strip it without pity, I have taken the naked man’s clothing. Such things happen when we lend and chase debtors. Often a debtor is extremely poor and cannot repay; we shut our bowels, become merciless, and do not see that he feeds wife and children from a few obols — while we demand bitterly and sometimes hold surplus. So Eliphaz accuses Job of taking clothing from the naked.

"You did not give water to the thirsty; you deprived the hungry of a morsel." Not only injustice but failure to do kindness is liable. These charges are truly blameworthy — but not true of Job, nor well said of him. In bitter demand sometimes a person has one morsel; even without a whole loaf we take it saying, "But you owe." "You sent widows away empty." If a widow enters our house, let us not send her empty; each fill her fold according to power. "You maltreated orphans." Maltreat no one; especially spare orphans. God commands fighting for helpless souls; poor, widows, and orphans need help more than others.

"Therefore snares have surrounded you" — the events into which his soul is trapped. "The light has turned out darkness for you:" once belongings, children, and health were light; now circumstances are darkness — desolation, open air, wanderer, fugitive, hearthless. "Water covered you sleeping:" the opposing energy covered you because you were not awake. Scripture knows a sleep of sin: "."

"Does not the one dwelling the heights oversee?" You think the high God does not see; he oversees all and brings down minds lifted by insolence. "Those carried by insolence he humbled." Likely because you insulted widows and orphans and pledged brothers for nothing, you suffer and are humbled. "You said, What has the Strong One known? Or will he judge according to the gloom?" God can judge even in a storm. "He traverses the circle of heaven" — providence goes around. "Will you not keep an eternal path which righteous men have trodden?" Can you watch the path providence travels? The righteous walk it toward the coming age; even if steps look equal, the soul treads eternal paths. "Who were seized untimely:" often the righteous die early, yet "perfected in a little they fill long times," for virtue in the Lord is the soul. Their foundations are a flowing river — always advancing in goods. "Who filled their houses with good things:" not these outer houses, but the houses of the ruling faculty — temperance, justice, courage, prudence, those from the

9works — that is, houses filled with goods. "A blameless one sneered at them" — at the counsel of the impious who teach opposite the truth with wretched doctrines. "Fire will eat their remnant." "He took from his mouth an exposition:" Origen found another edition reading confession — Confess your sins; take from God’s mouth an introduction with confession; take up his words from your heart. Eliphaz said this thinking he admonished Job. "If you turn and humble yourself before the Lord." "As a rock of a winter-torrent of Ophir:" from the gold-place your word will come varied and beautiful. "The Almighty will be a helper from enemies" if you subject yourself and confess. "He will render you pure as fired silver." Then free speech before the Lord, sins put away. "Upon your ways there will be light; he will restore a way of life of righteousness." Said toward Job unjustly — he did not sin — but toward us, justly.

Chapter 23: "His hand has become heavy upon my groan." If the vote of punishments could be brought at once, he could find him. Would that he could go to court, petition, and learn what God would say to what Job would say. See how he obtained what he prayed — it comes last in the book. He wanted to know the answer, and whether punishment would continue; he said this not as condemning injustice.

Chapter 24: bread sweetened for younger ones — sweet to the impious to feed young men so as to work insults through them. Chapter 27: "The Lord lives, who has thus judged me." The devil received authority and tested Job night and day — first through outward things, later through the body, then through friends. When the wife did not conquer him, three friends came — not enemies with plotting doctrines, but true words badly and out of season. Through them the devil planned to make Job speak against Providence, turn impious under toil, and grow weary under pain. The truly courageous man — after Eliphaz’s three dialogues and Sophar’s two, when they fell silent — answers after the Scripture-named preface. "The Lord lives, who has thus judged me, and the Almighty who has embittered my soul." I know from where

10—you have been moved to provoke me. I swear by the living Lord who judged me to suffer these things, who handed me to these circumstances, who gave the devil authority to examine and torment me so. "The Lord lives, who has thus judged me, and the Almighty who has embittered my soul." "May it not be for me to declare you righteous until I die." If I assent that you have understood why I suffer, I have declared you righteous till death. "I will not put away my guilelessness." I will not leave righteousness; I always remember to cling to it. "I am not conscious to myself of having done out-of-place things" — great freedom of speech for former life and for the time of trial.

Chapter 28: "What place is there of knowledge?" Knowledge encompasses things that hold alike in contemplation; understanding is discernment. "Silver will not stand as an exchange for it." Nothing equals wisdom — not silver or gold taken simply, not precious onyx or sapphire, not heights or gabis (some say the heaped lip of a measure). "Draw wisdom above the innermost things" — beyond India’s precious stones, or above the hyper-secret inward holy mysteries of God. "It has escaped every human" — even prophet or apostle.

Chapter 29: "When my paths were poured with butter." Job’s paths were virtues; temperance, justice, and courage poured so that even infants were fed from them. "My mountains were poured with milk" — high and great thoughts he climbed. "When I went out upright in a city": busy with teaching and benefit, loving the common good, not self-love. "Putting a finger upon mouth" may signal silence; or, since hand stands for works, they put their little work on the mouth, sensing they were unworthy to speak while Job, with greater works, was present.

"Those who heard blessed me; their tongue was glued to their larynx." Before torment he was so great that hearers blessed him and wondered how he grasped such things and could help them. As Moses was cautious to look face-to-face before God for excess brightness, so Job’s excess of wisdom made hearers unable to look into the sparkle of his thoughts; eyes turned aside, not following the deepest mind. Aquila and Symmachus: "witnessed about me"; others: "an eye seeing turned aside" — I cannot speak against. "I saved a poor one from a hand of a powerful one." See his brave deeds — according to the letter, and according to ascent much more. According to the

11letter: as far as our power goes, we ought to help the poor oppressed by the powerful. "And a foot to a lame one:" he granted feet of the soul even to those lamed in their bases, and by the word he himself became their foot. "A judgment which I did not know, I tracked out:" he teaches how to judge when called to settle brothers affairs.

Chapter 32: "And Job ceased with words." The three friends were quiet still to speak against him, for he was righteous opposite them. He did not simply cease; the heart understanding divine things did not cease. "There is a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be silent and a time to speak." When it was time to answer the three, he spoke; after silencing them, he was silent — said in praise: Job ceased. Elihu: "I was quiet, fearing to announce my own knowledge." He knows how humans suffer, why they fall into circumstances in this life alone, how the unjust prosper. I saw those doing injustice, and my feet were almost shaken. If I look only in this life, my steps were nearly poured out. "Not the long-timed ones are wise:" not only elders; youth can hear something noble. If time makes wise, much more God.

"The spirit of the belly destroys me." As a pregnant person comes to birth-pains until the formed child is born, so the love-of-learning soul conceives a word, forms and stamps it in order, and when ready does not hand over a miscarriage but something brought to term. "My belly is like a wineskin of new wine boiling, bound" — from here, Origen thinks, the Gospel: "No one puts new wine into old wineskins." "I will speak so that I may rest having opened the lips:" full of words before an understanding hearer, speaking rests. "I do not know how to wonder at a face; if not, moths will eat me" — moths eat those who take human faces.

Chapter 35: "If you have sinned, what will you do?" Look up to heaven and clouds and understand the sin. Approach the high priest so he may bring sacrifice: "If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins." If many lawless deeds, what can you do? Dissolve them — for the incurable we cannot heal, Christ came from heaven: "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered." "Since you are righteous, what will you give him?" What can righteousness add to God? "The one arranging night watches" is God. This whole age is night and darkness; light is kept for you. What you see now you see through a mirror; "in your light we will see light." Because it is night, many wars and wild beasts go about. "The one marking me off from four-footed ones of earth." If you are a sinner you are not marked off: "a human in honor did not understand; he was compared to senseless cattle; "do not become as horse and mule, which have no understanding." — And

12a little later: if you are a sinner, a fornicator, carried down, you are not marked off from the four-footed. Horses mad for females were born. So he takes courage: "the one marking me off from four-footed ones of earth."

Chapter 40: "Gird as a man your loin." God already gives a prize — freedom of speech: I will ask you; you answer me. Had Job not conquered and endured, he would not have heard that. Let no one answer God before becoming a man and girding the loin; while the loin is loose, one cannot reasonably answer the Lord. The perfect contests wait after this life, yet grace already pledges the athletes. When Job cast away goods and glorified the Giver, put away children and gave thanks, understood worms from the body and was not conquered — God spoke through whirlwind and clouds as preface and pledge. Hearing earlier words he stays silent, not yet knowing Moses later pattern — Moses spoke and God answered with a voice. God then gives freedom to speak. So great is God kindness that he takes a face not of judge only but of one judged with the human: "Come, and let us reason, says the Lord; "My people, what did I do to you; answer me."

"Do not reject my judgment." Remember the saying. Whenever God judges us to lose a child, a ruler, health — nothing happens unless God judges. "Not even a sparrow falls into a snare without the Father will in the heavens." So to the sufferer: do not reject my judgment; do not deny that I judged about you. "Do you think I have spoken oracle to you otherwise than so that you may appear righteous?" You were righteous but not apparent; endurance and courage were hidden till toils made them shine. In times of trial hear God present saying this — and do not appear unjust or impious.

"Take up height and power; be crowned; put on glory and honor. Send angels in wrath; humble every insolent one; quench a proud one." The insolent one campaigned against you — Send your hand; touch all he has; then he will bless me to my face — but you conquered. Take courage; humble every insolent one and his angels; quench the proud; strike the impious at once. "Fill their faces with dishonor" by conviction in you. "Look — wild beasts are beside you; he eats grass equal to oxen." Wild beasts are opposing powers; the Prophet prayed, "Do not hand over to the wild beasts the soul that confesses you." You have received authority over them, O human. If you serve God, upon asp—

13And you will tread on the basilisk. "But look — wild beasts are beside you." Beside you, Job; beside every one who keeps the memory; beside everyone who has won.

"He eats grass like oxen." Origen hears the worms that devour Job from his own flesh: a finishing stroke, he says, and "look, it eats as grass." "His power is upon the navel of the belly" — the first force set against the man, and the starting point of fornication. The same note marks the female so the campaign is not only against those who carry seed. Fittingly Scripture names the loin for the male and the navel of the belly for the woman: strength in the loin; power at the navel.

"Phoenician nations divide it." Because Canaanites — also called Phoenicians — are charged with great wickedness, each of that race takes a share from the dragon. "All the ships together cannot carry one hide of his tail": the dragon’s last extremities no fleet can kill. Humans sail in bodies as in boats and cannot lift even one hide of that tail by themselves; under divine oversight we can carry not only the hide but the whole beast and put it to death. Each kills the devil as far as lies in him, as the Apostle says: "May God crush Satan under your feet soon."

Chapter 41: "Who will uncover the face of his clothing?" Why not simply "his face"? What is the clothing doing here? Take actors who put on masks and hide what they are so they may seem something else. They take up masks, for example—

14—these stage hypocrites, now leaders, now other kings, now women. Their own face stays hidden; what they are does not show, and what they seem is what the eye catches. The dragon is like that. He never shows his own face; he borrows a face to deceive people and uses that. This enemy keeps many masks, and for each vice he puts on a face of virtue.

Who can unmask the face he wore? Who can uncover it and stop the lie that a dragon sits inside? Some of his other disciples are the same: "They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

"Who would enter the folding of his breastplate?" He names a breastplate and a chest — the place of the ruling faculty. Nothing in him is simple; he is crafty and folded. A holy person can expose that fold; the holy breastplate is not folded that way. "Who will open the gates of his face?" He hides what is stored within. Who can open those gates and show the craft, the venom, the evils laid up there?

"Fear is round about his teeth." Of such teeth it is said, "You crushed the teeth of sinners," and "The Lord will crush the molars of the lions." That fear is not the fear of God; it is the fear around the dragon’s teeth. But if you have Christ in yourself, do not worry about this

15fear. "Fear the Lord your God, and fear no other besides him."

"His inwards are bronze asps" — the hidden doctrines and thoughts. Everything inside him is asp venom, and those asps are not soft but hard. "From his mouth": the blasphemies and speeches of impious, atheist teachers. "From his mouth go out burning lamps, and fire-pans of fire are flung about."

Origen takes every impious introducer of atheist doctrines as a member of the dragon. The dragon’s mouth can be read tropically as the place from which destroying words come. When he has heard speech that, under a Christian mask, accuses the Craftsman — championing Marcion, Valentinus, or Basilides; speaking ill of the Maker of heaven and earth; denying that he is, or that he is of spiritual substance — then from such mouths go burning lamps and flung fire-pans. Knowing this, we keep ourselves so those lamps do not burn us and those pans do not touch us.

"In his neck power lodges." There is an evil power. But the weakness my Savior and Lord took on for me — the weakness of God — conquered

16that one’s power. "The weakness of God is stronger than humans," says the Apostle; Origen adds — stronger than the dragon’s power.

"The fleshes of his body have been glued." Scripture could have said "united," but it did not. With him the one is many; things that seem one are glued, not truly united. "His heart is fixed like a stone; it stands like an unhammerable anvil" — not driven, not yielding to a word; hard and unbending. Whoever tears power from the devil and this dragon may keep that unhammerable heart. But whoever is gold and follows the golden Word yields until he becomes a golden leaf and takes the stamped letters of God, in Christ Jesus — to whom be glory forever. Amen.

Chapter 42: "The Lord gave Job double what he had before." The noble athlete who endured every trial receives the prize of endurance: everything double the former store. The Lord Jesus Christ gives not double but a hundredfold: "Whoever leaves father or mother, house, brothers, sisters for my sake or for the gospel will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life." Job would not have received double of the former things if he had not shown double virtue.