Chapter XXIII.
But Job answered and said: Now my words also are in bitterness, and the hand of my scourge is more grievous than my mourning. Let us leave unbelieving friends, who justly determine my misery in this calamity, and add to my bitterness. I will turn myself wholly to God, and I will say to him with confidence for the following reasons:
Who will grant me to know, and find him, and come to his throne? It is said that by understanding one can know God: one can also find him by good works, and come to his throne, and by progressing in knowledge of the future and in the thought of judgment, one can approach even the contemplation of divine power itself, which the pure heart of the world will surely see. This heart, purified by numerous trials of character, is said to have been possessed by the holy Job.
I will present before him a judgment. 'I will present before the sight of my God the judgment of your justice,' he says, 'according to this: From him I will seek the fairness of his judgment.' However, before his final sentence is pronounced against me, I will bring forth many reproaches to him, because although I know his singular justice, I suffer as a righteous person the torments that should rather be given to the unjust and impious. Therefore, he says the following:
And I will fill my mouth with reproaches: so that I may know what words he will answer me, and understand what he will say to me. That is, the complaints of just sorrow.
I do not want him to contend with me in great strength, nor crush me with the weight of his greatness. Let him argue fairness against me and my judgment will prevail. In his majestic greatness, let us understand awe, not something physical, for God is a spirit. I am certain, he says, that these miseries of affliction, when judged by him himself, it will be clear that I am enduring them without any merit of sin; therefore he says: My judgment will prevail.
If I go to the east, he does not appear; if to the west, I do not understand him; if to the left, what shall I do? I shall not apprehend him. If I turn to the right, I shall not see him. But he knows my way, and he will test me like gold passing through fire. While he enumerates the parts of the world, he says that he inhabits the whole everywhere; yet he confesses that he is completely invisible to himself, because his divinity does not subject itself to the gaze of creatures. He declared that he knew God's whole way of life, for he knew it very well.
I followed his footsteps: I kept his way, and did not stray from it. I did not depart from the commandments of his lips, and I did not hide the words of his mouth in my bosom. This is what he wanted to be kept, and I kept it.
For he alone is, and no one can turn away his thought, and his soul has done whatever he has wanted. This is because his judgments are inscrutable, and his ways are unsearchable.
And when he has fulfilled his will in me, there are many other similar things that are available to him. When he has already afflicted me with whatever tortures he wanted, he can still inflict on me as many more as he wishes, causing the insensible to tremble like the sensible.
And therefore I am disturbed by his presence. Mind you, feeling and partly understanding.
And considering him, I am troubled with fear. That is, I am filled with awe at the majesty of him, and shudder at it.
God softened my heart, and the Almighty troubled me. My heart was dissolved by excessive fear and dread, as we know from this place, not because it was softened from the hardness of unbelief to receive faith, since Job himself remained strong in faith toward God. Hence it follows: The Almighty troubled me; as mentioned above.
For I did not perish on account of impending darkness, nor did darkness cover my face. She referred to the very miseries of her own calamity as darkness, which she wished to call like sudden ruins threatening, for as they pressed upon her, she said that she did not perish on account of despair: nor did the disbelief of my mind blind my face, or the denial of God.