Selections on Job

1On Job 1 the Selecta mark how the Accuser ordered the raid: camels under the horsemen, donkeys and ox-teams under the captors, sheep under fire because he hated them, and the sons targeted whenever he found a time. Had he found them reading or praying, Origen says, he would have had no place to strike; he prevailed when the moment was drunkenness and the drinking-party. The wind that struck the houses corners is read with the hypocrites who pray on street corners: whoever has left the straight road lives by corners, and a broad corner is large, loose wickedness.

On Job 19, How long will you weary my soul? heavy words work like heavy loads on beasts. Baldads speech felt like a crushing pack, and nothing reaches a soul like a hard word — many endure bodily torture who cannot endure insult. The finished athlete still endures while weary; to bear insult is greatness, as Paul says, Being reviled, we bless. Job remains the bravest of athletes, yet he feels the fatigue of harsh oversight and asks why friends add soul-pain to body-pain, wounding more with speech than disease wounds flesh.

You speak against me names shameless face-to-face insult. I cry out and nowhere is judgment means the bout is not finished: the crowns verdict does not come mid-wrestling. Origen will not accuse God that Job suffers without sentence; judgment here is freedom and release. Chapter 20 then turns to gifts going up to heaven and the heretics lofty sacrifice, and to dreamlike enemies who invent faults and vanish like smoke in the psalm.

2Unjust wealth will be vomited. Origen names another such wealth: heretical words that fill the belly with teaching against the truth — not sweet, but gall of asps, wine from the vine of Sodom. God will not let that hoard stay; an angel will drag them from the badly built house — the assembly of evildoers. Watch, then, lest persuasive heresy strip you from the Churchs mystery.

The heterodox does not see the milking of nomads: nomads are souls pastured under the good shepherd. Doctrines against God have no sweetness, only harsh density. He crushed many weak houses: finding someone soft in faith and sound teaching, the heterodox teacher plunders and cannot set the lie on its feet. A day of wrath is prepared for him — circumcised apostate, heterodox, or any other impious person.

Why do the impious live and grow old in wealth? means long-standing riches, not a sudden fortune. Flute, harp, and drum name another fatherly happiness in childrens joy. From such suspicions the accuser charges Job with taking pledges for nothing and stripping clothing from the naked.

3If I reclaim a debt by stripping a persons only tunic, I have taken the clothing of the naked. Lending often hardens us: the debtor feeds wife and children on a few coins, and we still demand bitterly while we have more than enough. Origen hears You stripped the naked not only as seizure but as refusal to clothe and feed — greed by omission.

The friends fall silent as if bound at the mouth, sensing they are unfit to speak beside Jobs greater works; a finger marks the smallest deed. Job had put on righteousness as a tunic and judgment as a double cloak — clothing woven from virtue. Chapter 32 opens with Elihus fear to announce his knowledge of how people suffer and how the unjust sometimes prosper in this life.

4Elihu offers knowledge of suffering and of unjust people who prosper. If I watch only this life, Origen says with the psalm-sense, my feet nearly slip; if I remember what is coming, they stand. Hear me follows that settled footing.

Variant lines stress patient listening until understanding is reached. Guardians — angels who encamp — mark a person off from beasts and enemies. God teaches above cattle and above birds of the air because humankind alone is honored with reason. By creation we are set apart from animals; but if you live as a sinner bent downward, that separation is lost.

5Compared with cattle you become like horse and mule without understanding. Chapter 40 answers: gird your loins like a man. Perfect prizes wait after this life, yet grace already gives earnest-money. When Job lost goods and still praised the Giver, gave back children with thanks, and was not beaten by worm-ridden disease, God spoke from cloud and whirlwind as a first installment of the awards.

Job stays silent, lacking boldness, not yet knowing Moses spoke and God answered by voice. God grants him freedom to speak and even takes the part of one reasoned with, as in Come, let us reason and My people, what have I done to you? The prize includes being asked and allowed to answer. Only the one who has endured hears Gird like a man; loose loins cannot reply well. Do not refuse my judgment means: do not call your suffering irrational when God decides you must bear something.

6Loss of child, property, or health cannot touch us unless God judges. Do not reject my judgment means: do not deny what I decided about you in this speaking. Do you think I dealt with you for any end but that you might appear righteous? You were righteous but hidden; endurance and courage needed the pains to shine them out. In distress we should hear God saying the trial was allowed so that righteousness would be plain to those who did not know it.

Take up height: the victor is to take power, be crowned, and put on beauty. The insolent campaigner is humbled and sent off in shame with his ranks. Chapter 41 asks whether one will play with the dragon as with a bird or bind him like a sparrow for a child. For a finished soul Satan is handed over bound, unable to hurt, led where the child wills — by the Lords grace.

7By grace Satan is bound for infants and nursing ones, from whose mouth God prepared praise. Nations feed on him: as the Lord feeds the faithful, the dragon feeds the impious — food for the Ethiopians read as sons of darkness. Every word we take is either empty hearing from the dragon or a building word from Christ.

No fleet of human bodies can by itself strip even one hide from his tail; only under divine oversight is he finished. He is folded; the holy can expose the fold, and to the holy he is not folded. Spirit will not pass him means nothing escapes him — all must come through. Prepare not to be seized. His eyes have the look of the Morning Star — not that they are that star.

8His eyes only look like the Morning Star: he transforms himself into an angel of light and pretends to be a day-sign. Burning lamps name the dragons mouth — introducers of godless doctrines. Under Christian pretext, Marcionite, Valentinian, or Basilidean speech that attacks the Maker of heaven and earth sends out firebrands. Keep yourselves lest those lamps burn you.

One who after ruin takes the dragon in again receives into the soul a creature filled with evils. Chapter 42: the Lord gave double. The one who has stood every trial receives endurance-prizes doubled — and the Lord gives even a hundredfold. Double restoration corresponds to double virtue shown.