Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 3:52pm

Lent With Job and Saint Thomas Aquinas: Chapter Seventeen

[9] The justices of the Lord are right, rejoicing hearts: the commandment of the Lord is lightsome, enlightening the eyes. [10] The fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever: the judgments of the Lord are true, justified in themselves.

Psalm 18: 9-10

 

Job argues that his friends are wrong about his misfortune being caused by his sins and wrong about God:

Job had shown above the great number of his afflictions, (16:14) the humiliation of his mind, (16:16) the innocence (16:18) and the brevity of a life definitively lost, (16:23) and by which the wordiness of his friends is conclusively proved. In this chapter then he intends to prove the premises and finally conclude their ignorance. (v.10) First he begins to prove what he had said about the process of human life, and he presents beforehand the cause of the shortness of life, when he says, “My spirit will be weakened.” For the life of the body is lived through vital spirits which are diffused from the heart to all its members. The body lives as long as they are strong in the body. But when the natural caloric power (energy) begins to grow weak in the heart, such spirits grow less. By this growing less and debilitation he, of course, means the weakening of the spirit. He then states the effect of this cause saying, “my days will grow shortened.” For weakness of the vital spirit shortens the days of life. To answer the objection that a spirit once weakened would again be strengthened again according to kind of existence of this mortal life, he says, “nothing remains for me but the tomb,” as if to say: Once the span of this present life is finished, nothing of this present life remains for me except the grave and those things which befit the grave.

Then he shows their consolation to be vain in another way. For they consoled him saying sin was the cause of such adversities coming on him, and that if he repented then he would return to prosperity. But he rejects this saying, “I have not sinned,” because he did not have the remorse of conscience about any grave sin for which he had incurred such great adversities, thus he even says later in the text, “For my heart has not accused me in my whole life.” (27:6) Thus this is not against what is said in 1 John, “If we have said we have no sin, we lie to ourselves.” (1 John 1:8) By this he explains what he had said above about his innocence, “I have suffered these things without having evil on my hand.” (16:18) He then says, “and my eye lingers on bitter things.” He uses the plural, “bitter things” because of the many adversities which he had enumerated above. He says, “lingers” because although he has humbled himself among bitter things and sewn up a sack over his skin, (16:16), the bitter things nevertheless remain. He attributes bitter things to the eye because of the weeping they cause, which he already expressed saying, “My face was puffed up from weeping,” (16:17) and again, “my eye pours out for God,” (16:21) because his eye was weeping among the bitter things so that it aimed only at divine help, and that is why he continues here, “Free me.” For Job understood that he alone could free him who placed him in the power of the evil one. (16:12) Truly he was not praying to be freed from adversity like those who would procure earthly prosperity after the adversity, but he prayed to be led to high-mindedness, and so he then says, “and place me near you.” For since God is the very essence of good, it is necessary that he who is placed close to God, be freed from evil. Man is placed near to God insofar as he approaches him with his mind through knowledge and love, but this happens imperfectly in the state of a sojourner on earth in which man suffers attacks. Because he is placed near to God, however, he is not be overcome by them. Man is perfectly placed near to God in his mind in the state of ultimate happiness in which he cannot suffer attacks, and he shows he desires this saying, “do not let the hand of anyone fight against me,” because no matter how much someone would want to attack me, if I were placed perfectly near to you, no one’s attack will disturb me. This is then the expectation Job had for his consolation in the midst of bitter things, hoping to be placed near to God where he could not fear attacks.

The prattling friends of Job did not understand this spiritual consolation of Job, and so he then says, “You have made their hearts far from learning,” from your spiritual teaching through which you teach one to hope for spiritual goods and to hold temporal goods in contempt. Since they only place their hope in things weak and time bound, they cannot arrive at spiritual height and be placed near to God. He therefore express this saying, “yet they will not be lifted up.” From the fact that they were placed far from spiritual teaching, he concludes that Eliphaz promises only temporal goods to Job as a consolation, (5:18) and he expresses this saying, “He promises plunder to his companions,” that is, the procurement of temporal goods which can only come to one person if another loses. So the acquisition of temporal goods is likened to plundering. It is not universally true that after repentance men recover temporal prosperity, since even the good do not always enjoy temporal prosperity, and so then he says, “the eyes of his sons will fail.” He calls his sons those who believe his promise, hope for temporal rewards for the goods which they do, but when they do not attain them their eyes fail, like those ceasing from their hope. Just as Eliphaz promised temporal goods to those doing good, so also he asserted that all temporal adversities come about because of the sins of the one who suffers them. Since Job had suffered many adversities, Eliphaz uses him as an example to the people, and as he expresses this saying, “He has used me as a proverb to the people and his example in their midst.” This is because to prove his opinion about the cause of adversities he used Job as an example, presuming he was punished for sin.

Go here to read the rest.  In antiquity in most religions the relationship between worshiper and a god tended to be very transactional:  the worshiper would offer a sacrifice to a god in order to gain the favor of the god for some particular purpose.  Philosophers would sometimes attempt to tie in the traditional worship of their societies to some higher moral purpose, but that was very much an add on and not part of the original cultus.  Judaism was different.  Mandating sacrifices to God, a strong moral code enforced by God was part of the religion from the very start, and, as the prophets never tired of pointing out, the mandated sacrifices were as nothing before God when compared to the duty to live justly and to obey His commandments.  What the Book of Job does is to sheer from Judaism any belief that one worships God to attain Earthly prosperity.  Job loses everything and Job is perplexed by this because he knows he is free from serious sin.  His friends are very much in the transactional mode of looking at God and assumes that Job must have broken his end of the bargain with God through sin.  In this they are wrong about Job and wrong in their fundamental understanding about God.  Although perplexed Job looks to God, not for the return of his past prosperity, but for vindication that his present misfortunes do not mean that he has departed from the moral code commanded by God.

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