Chapter IV.
How Job's friends, coming to comfort him, aggravated his grief: and how magnificently he expressed his sense of divine power, and designated the mysteries of redemption.
10. But let us hear him speaking again: In truth I know that it is so; for how can a mortal be just, etc. (Job 9:1-2). Those friends who had come to console him were pressing upon him like the waves of the sea with their words. One type of solace it is for those who are afflicted and suffering bitter hardship to be without guilt; so that the adversities they endure do not seem to be endured as punishment for their sins. They were eager to take this away from that holy man as well; so that he might be seen as the author of his own affliction, who had incurred the offense of the Lord with serious sins, and was enduring them on account of his impieties: describing the punishments of the wicked; so that those who sowed vices might reap for themselves sorrows, because they perished by God’s command (Job 4:8-9), and perished by the breath of his own life, who breathed into the clay houses that were inhabited (Ibid., 19 and following), and withered, and in whose thoughts the plots of the tricksters were frustrated, and the mouth of the unjust was stopped (Job 5:13-16). Indeed, these things are true about the power of the Lord; but they were not befitting the merits of such a great man.
11. So he replied: In truth I know that it is so; for how can a mortal be righteous before the Lord? If he should desire to contend with Him in judgment, He would not answer him, nor would he be able to refute even one of His words with a thousand arguments. For He is wise in understanding, strong and mighty; who then is so stubborn that he can stand before Him? He causes mountains to shake and they do not know it, and He overturns them in His anger. He shakes the earth from its foundations, and its pillars tremble. He who speaks to the sun alone, and does not rise, but rather marks the stars. He alone stretches out the sky, and walks upon the sea as if on solid ground. He creates the morning and the evening, the north wind and the south wind: He performs great and unsearchable things, glorious and immense, countless in number. If He passes by me, I will not see Him; and if He goes past me, I will not even know it (Ibid., IX, 3 et seq.). How much more powerful is the trumpet blast of His dominion? But in it is the help of the just, not ruin. Finally, it seems that power is expressed, but rather the mysteries of our redemption are declared.