Chapter XVII.
My spirit will be weakened, and my days will be shortened. This means that in the shortness of his life, his spirit will gradually diminish and fail.
And only a tomb remains for me. For death is the end of all torments.
I have not sinned, and my eye remains in bitterness. It is true, that I have not sinned in a way that is pleasing to God. And although this passage can be understood to mean that he has not sinned in God, and yet has sinned as if in Him, he suffers the consequences of the blasphemers. And perhaps because he is praised by God in the present, he had not sinned: but he admits to having sinned in the past times of his youth.
Deliver me, and place me next to you, and let anyone's hand fight against me. Therefore, he desires to hide under the shield of God's protection: fortified and defended, he does not fear the raging enemy.
You have made their heart far from discipline: therefore they shall not be exalted. For Job speaks these things to God, concerning the devil and his servants who preceded sins: indeed for which they received the punishment of hardness. Therefore, the reason for which we speak, they were distanced so as not to attain discipline, because they lost the exaltation of their good nature due to their own will.
He promises prey to his partners, and the eyes of his sons will fail. He has made me as a proverb of the common people, and I am an example before them. The partners or sons of the devil are his servants: but they are called partners because of their close association in conspiracy against God. The sons are called so because of their imitation of the devil himself. Therefore, these demons promised the blessed Job as prey, their father, and the head of rebellion, the devil, while believing that they could drive him to blasphemy through such great sufferings and that he would thus be abandoned by God, or when he stripped him of all the glory of his house and his sons.
My eye was filled with indignation, and my limbs were reduced to nothingness. According to the Gospel: The lamp of your body is your eye. Therefore, Job laments that his eye has become blind due to that indignation, which preserved the merits of his holiness: because he suffered unjust punishment with a clear conscience.
The righteous will be astonished by this. Marveling at the just judgments of God, how the righteous, who are without crime, are afflicted with punishments.
And the innocent will rise up against the hypocrite. The hypocrite is the devil himself, who, being of darkness, that is, the inventor of sin, by departing from the true light, becomes dark. Like Lucifer, who set his throne in heaven and transformed himself into an angel of light. Indeed, Job called each of his friends a hypocrite because they deceitfully spoke deceitful words under the guise of consolation.
And the righteous shall hold to their path, and with clean hands shall add strength. In which indeed virtues manifest themselves more so as to grow.
Therefore, all of you convert and come: and I will not find any wise person among you. Convert, he says, from the perverseness of your way of thinking, in which you constantly strive to condemn me. Come: the speech of the inviter is for the advancement of a better life: which is, oh you hypocrites, and not true, nor faithful friends, come to the recognition of truth, which you least know how to possess.
These are my days that have passed. These days of departed happiness can be understood, in which the blessed Job lived, strong in virtues. Therefore, he speaks with a sigh that these days have passed, when he was surrounded by many misfortunes and endured unbearable pain.
My thoughts are scattered, tormenting my heart. They turn night into day, and again, after darkness, I hope for light. When I am continually placed in the intention of one contemplation, and have my thoughts always directed towards God: the wounds of this approaching misery, I see those same thoughts of mine scattered from their unique solidity in me, and for this reason my heart is tormented: because it is torn apart by their fragmentation, seeing me endure evils incongruous with my simplicity.
If I endure, my home is hell, and in darkness I have made my bed. Tormented by the punishments of the body and the torments of thoughts, as it is said, he was driven mad with ceaseless time, and therefore he cried out that he was already suffering the torments of the underworld. Or perhaps that separation by which he was made different from other people, sitting in filth, was called darkness, because they did not have the light of human consolation.
I said to decay, you are my father: my mother and my sister are worms. For such a long time, I am disgusted, that I call the very decay itself, and the worms growing in its putridity, my parents: and through this, just as no one of mortals can exist without parents: so also I became, as if without decay, and I could not be without worms. They are thus in my flesh as if in their own nature: as if I myself were subsisting from them. When they are generated in me from the corruption of my flesh, I am not generated from them. Where he has shown that mortality was brought about by sin: to whom corruption belongs, and decay to corruption. But he called the Father the origin of the human race in Adam, who became corruptible due to corruption. And he called the mother human nature, tainted by corruption. And he called every descendant of Adam a sister, who is born from the corruption of mortality, like from the corruption of decay: as Baldad also said: Man is decay, and the son of man is a worm.
Where is now my waiting, and who considers my patience? What he says, and who considers my patience? openly manifests himself strong in those torments: for which he almost complains that he could not reach the retribution of so much labor.
All my things will descend into the deepest depths of hell. Others have said, 'All my good things.' The good things say that they are descending to the underworld, which is my soul, or I myself am descending for them. Truly, we do not believe in justice, that such a great and noble man could have been frustrated by his holy works. But what he says:
Will there at least be rest for me? That is, if I suffer the punishments of hell in this life, do you think there will be any rest for me in the places of punishment? But this is spoken by one burdened with miseries, rather than conquered by despair: for in other places he says to the Lord: I know that you protect me in hell: until your fury passes.