Chapter XL.
And the Lord answered Job, out of the whirlwind said. That is, either out of the force of rebuke, or out of the disturbed air and dark clouds.
Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you and you shall answer me. As others have said: by no means, but gird up your loins like a man, and so on; which means: I do not want you to be silent, says God, as you have arranged, but rather speak, and answer me what I ask you. However, since God is a spirit, and he speaks to men, many divine letters indicate to us the manner in which he speaks, such as when the Father speaks to the Son from the cloud, and to Moses in the flame of fire, and to Ezekiel sitting with the elders of Israel, it becomes the word of the Lord, and only he heard what the Lord said.
Will you make my judgment void and condemn me, so that you may be justified? In this passage, the Lord reveals the meaning of the words spoken by the holy Job that were written above. For with reproach, he rebukes Job because he wanted to justify himself against the accusations and insinuations made against him, by calling his own suffering, which he claims to have unjustly endured, justice rather than injustice.
And if you have an arm like God, and you thunder with a similar voice, surround yourself with beauty, and raise yourself up on high, and be glorious, and dress in splendid garments. Scatter the proud in your fury, and confound them, and humble all the arrogant. Look upon all the proud, and confound them, and crush the wicked in their place. Hide them in the dust together, and sink their faces into the pit: and I will confess that your right hand is able to save you. Behold Behemoth, whom I made with you; he eats grass like an ox. This is to say: Can you subdue and scatter these very demons, against whose tribulations you are besieged and crushed? Even if you were to contend against God, if you had the strength that God has, and if the voice of your authority were to resound terrifyingly in this world; if you were also adorned with the splendor of eternity and elevated in glory and sublimity, and fortified with all the virtues of holiness as if with beautiful garments, nevertheless, with your just judgment, you would scatter all the proud ones just as with a fit of anger and drive them to their proper place, that is, the prison of the underworld; and you would crush them and hide them away in the dust, separated from the light of the saints, or, as others have said, you would cast them underground. Moreover, you would sink their faces, that is, their souls with their understanding, as if the light of the eyes, into the pit of hell, that is, something as impossible as for a man to have these things, so foolish is it for you to speak against God as if on equal footing, from whom you ought to humbly hope for mercy, so that by his right hand, that is, his power, you may be saved from those whom I mentioned: the proud, the arrogant, and the impious. Behold this very thing, you know, the strong devil, and your most powerful enemy, whom I named Behemoth, the name of a ferocious beast, to you like an ox, a gentle animal indeed, I will make it eat hay, not flesh like a lion. Because when flesh is eaten, it is not done without the death of the living. But it is not so with you, as I have already said, by the command of my authority, I have commanded it in this way, saying: Behold, it is in your hand to live, preserve its life. Indeed, the great doctors of the Church, who came into contact with Hebrew letters, have interpreted it in Latin in various ways. Therefore, the enemy devil, along with all his satellites, is described here as being expelled by God. Because of the plurality of his name, the ancients interpreted it thus: But behold, the beasts that I have made with you, eat hay like cattle, that is, and this was done by the power of my right hand, so that they might receive into their power to devour your substance and faculties, which are compared to precious treasures of your mind. And so, the cheap and fleeting things, which are symbolized by the name of hay, were taken away from you: not the great and grand things, that is, the ornaments of the soul, which the ruin of blasphemy would strip you of, the kind of sin by which the whole man is devoured by the devil. Thus, this is what God says about it.
His strength is in his loins, and his power is in the navel of his belly. In the loins and navels, pleasure of the belly, or rather lust of the flesh, is understood, which was inserted into the genital members after the fall of the first man, so that those members, contrary to the natural law, may be stimulated by the incentives of lust even when a man does not want it: and thus the followers of pleasures, serving the devil with their own vices, become partakers of his strength and are made his members, of which he himself is the head.
He tightens his tail like a cedar tree. By this it seems to me that he will never turn back to God in his last moments, which are represented by his tail, because he will never repent of his proud and wicked tyranny. But being exalted like a cedar tree, he will be shattered and broken by the voice of the Lord, who judges justly. He is constricted like a very hard wood, indicating the hardness of his heart, so that he does not understand and becomes foolish; and he is blinded so that he does not see until the end. When he tucks in his tail, it is understood: The Prophet speaks deceptively: the tail is a lie according to the authority of the holy prophets. Therefore, Behemoth binds these as enemies, as his partners and ministers, in the unity of a conspiracy, about whom the ancient interpreters have said, he raises his tail like a cypress, indicating their elevated state of mind, calling this tree, which extends upwards with its tall peak from a single trunk.
The nerves of his testicles are entangled. In these nerves, there seem to be certain strong and alluring bonds of pleasures with which carnal men are ensnared, as the prophet blames them for their vices, saying among other things: But turning to obligations, where I believe that simply almost an insatiable pleasure in human limbs is signified by the prophet, to which our flesh would give in, unless it were helped by the grace of God, as the Apostle says.
His bones are like hollow pipes of bronze, and his cartilage is like plates of iron. These names of his body parts indicate that the devil and his followers are hard, rigid, stubborn, and inflexible. In his bones and cartilage, both internally and externally, in thought and action, his perfect wickedness is revealed. As for the statement that his cartilage is like plates of iron, some have said, 'His spine is made of molten iron,' to indicate that the devil will never humble himself to God through repentance.
He is the beginning of the ways of God. He who made him will apply his sword. In this place, it seems to me that the sense is that among all creatures, he was the first created by God for walking in God's ways and observing the commands of the Lord through obedience to His precepts, and therefore it is said that he is the beginning of the ways of the Lord. For in the prophet Ezekiel in the chapter of the igniters of stones, it is reported that he was the first of all the angels, and the crown in the hand of the Lord. Or it can be said, that in his eternal being God always remaining, as if going out into the making of creatures, is seen, and these are his ways, so that the invisible things may appear from visible ones. Or each creature is a way of God, through which knowledge of God is attained, while known by him. Or those ways of God are such, when to each reasonable creature, God as if coming to it makes himself known. Therefore, here Behemoth is called the beginning of God's ways, because being made first, he received knowledge of his God by whom he was created. But the Lord Christ, created at the beginning of God's ways, is referred to as having come to reconcile the world through his own blood, and to walk in the way of the Father's commandments as his works, which he demonstrated at the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel. And when the Lord says: He who made him will apply his sword, that is, he who made Behemoth will apply his sword to him, that is, the evil by which he himself destroyed others he will be punished with, just as the Holy Spirit spoke about his similar ones in the psalm: Sinners have unsheathed their sword, and their sword shall enter their own heart. However, it should be noted that there is a change of persons in this passage. For earlier, the Lord said that he had made Behemoth himself, and now he says that another created him, saying: He is the beginning of the ways of God, who made all things. This can be explained in the following way: the Father made everything in the Son, as the Prophet says to God: You have made all things in wisdom. Others have said: He is the beginning of the creation of the Lord's design: that is, he is mocked by his angels, that is, the saints. Therefore, they are deceived by these things, when by the grace of the Holy Spirit and the merit of holiness, they are subjected to them, and by invoking the name of Christ they escape from possessed bodies. Certainly by those who, according to Isaiah, have cast off all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy, are born as infants in Christ, of whom he prophesied with the power of the grace of Christ against their adversary the devil in the spirit of providence, saying: And the infant will delight from his mother’s breast on the holes of the asp, and in the den of the king, who has been weaned, he will stretch forth his hand. And the Lord, while speaking of his whole body, said to those whom he had made innocent and little ones, saying: Behold, I have given you the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and nothing shall harm you.
These mountains produce herbs. All the animals of the field play there. These mountains are located in the northern region, where the proud devil says, 'I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.' We rightly understand these mountains as representing the proud and excessively haughty people who imitate the swelling of his heart. Therefore, dwelling in them, he feeds on the temporary delight, which is called the pleasure of herbs, and he takes pleasure in the harmful pleasure of the green and thriving evil that is in them, in which all the animals of the field also play. These beasts are allies and ministers of the devil, about whom the prophet says, praying to God: Do not deliver the soul of one who confesses to you to the beasts. But this world is indeed a field, according to the authority of the Lord, as He says in the Gospel: But this world is a field. Therefore, in such mountains, which bear the herbs of luxury, not fruitful trees, these beasts, namely the opposing powers, lacking the firmness of virtues, play with the flow of lust and the vice, and in all their mountains, they boast in crimes and abominable offenses. Others have spoken about this place: They climbed up a steep mountain: they made joy to the quadrupeds in the underworld. I think the steep mountain signifies the peak of diabolical pride, to which they raised themselves too high, so that they fell from it to the depths of the underworld. Therefore, they made joy, meaning, they provided consolation to those who, in agreement with his pride, were expelled from heaven and assigned to the underworld, or to those sinners who, because of him, fell into the deep abyss of hell, under whose persona the prophetic speech thus addresses the prince of demons himself: And you were wounded just like us, and you were made similar to us. Your pride has been brought down to the underworld, your corpse has fallen: it has brought joy to the animals, as it is said, that is, to sinners, who, prone or inclined to the earth, cannot look up at the sky.
He sleeps in the shadow in a hidden place of the pen, in humid places. That shadows of bodies exist, no one doubts: but the shadow in divine Scriptures sometimes signifies rest and refreshment, sometimes punishment. Hence it is said, the shadow of death. Sometimes shadows are referred to as sins, which are as close to the body as a shadow is to the body and death. Therefore, the devil dwells in sins and rests in the secret thoughts or even loins: hence the term humid places is used. Whether in secret, that is, in the hidden things of God, which God does not require and does not appear to visit as unworthy: concerning which hidden things the prophet says to God: Their belly is filled with your hidden things. Therefore, sins are hidden like darkness from the light of truth. Or, as we have already said, if the devil dwells in a remote place of the heart, the empty heart is open to fearlessness of God and indulgence, and to all the temptations of vices. For this shadow, ignorant of the sun, signifies the secrets of the reed and the pen. Others have said: Under all kinds of trees it sleeps, next to the rush, the pen, and the reed. He speaks of all kinds of trees, which, however, are all unproductive, not having the marrow of the love of God, nor the fruit of good works.
The shadows protect his shadow. His sins are above all the sins of the wicked, and his impious acts are prominent, which he defends and conceals through a certain protection of his malice. Others have said this: large trees are overshadowed by him: where it seems to me that he said this in the sense that although the evil spirits or men who serve the devil may be proud, the devil surpasses them in the magnitude of his sins, because he is the inventor of a more wicked crime than the imitator of sin.
Willows of the stream shall surround him. Or branches and shoots, as others have said. This mortal world, because of its swift mutability, is called by the name of a stream: just as the prophet says, when he prophesies about the passion of the Lord: He shall drink from the stream on the way. For it was by that dispensation in which he deigned to come to us that he drank from the cup of death on the cross, of which he said to the Father: If it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Therefore, the people of this world, who are like leaves with the senses of sin and the bitterness of unfaithfulness, are lying about the fruits of good works, and the devil surrounds them, even joining them in partnership.
Behold, he will swallow up the river, and not be astonished; he trusts that the Jordan will flow into his mouth. In many places of the Scriptures, we know that the name of a river signifies the human race, of which even the adversary himself says: 'The river is mine, and I made it myself.' Therefore, to this river, namely, the human race in its lowest and most inferior parts, like a flowing river, he insinuates desires of lust, pleasure, and the love of the present world, so that he can absorb it and swallow it up as though in the depths; for thus the human race will be carried headlong into the aforementioned vices, so that it can be easily devoured by the enemy. And when he says: He has confidence that the Jordan may flow into his mouth; the Jordan river contains the sacrament of baptism; while in Him the Lord Christ is baptized, our baptism is consecrated. According to the mystical understanding, the mountains and hills, rams, and lambs of the sheep rejoice in the presence of God Jacob, who, by believing, supplanted his elder brother who was incredulous. Concerning the land of this Jordan, that is, the Church, the prophet speaks in the person of the believer, saying that the Lord remembers. Starting from the little hill of Christ, who became small because of his passion, he was made lower than the angels, obeying the Father even unto death. Therefore, this Behemoth, swollen with excessive presumption, carries himself with confidence, so that he may drink the aforementioned Jordan, which clearly symbolizes the sacraments of the Church, with his mouth, and, eager to devour, swallow it in his stomach. That is, he also seeks those whom the blood of Christ redeemed through the water of regeneration, which the Jordan symbolically represents, from his power and cruel rule, in order to make them his own again, either by hidden persuasion or open assault.
In his eyes he will capture him like a hook. These words of the Father are about the Son according to that conversation, which we mentioned earlier, where the Father speaks about him, when he was talking about the devil: He is the beginning of the ways of God. Therefore, Behemoth, a man clothed in the flesh of a man assuming a divine nature, will capture him in his eyes, says the Father about the Son, that he will capture the devil. In his eyes, he says, that is, in the very light of understanding, where the sight of wisdom and rational nature is. There, I say, being captivated by divine wisdom, while through his cunning and craftiness he does not see whose flesh death is about to devour. Therefore, the devil is captivated in this manner.
And in his nostrils he will pierce holes. That is, our Lord Christ will crush and drive away the raging cruelty and panting for the destruction of the saints; but I think that the saints, because of the wood of the cross, should reasonably be understood here; and thus our Lord humbles and breaks the enemy, and repels every attack of the raging envy, while he strikes him back through the same saints with the wood of his cross.
Are you able to extract Leviathan from the hook? He changed the appearance of the enigmas, so that the devil whom he had previously called Behemoth by a different name, now calls him Leviathan; but there he describes him as a beast that inhabits the land; here, however, he names him as one who dwells in the waters of the sea. Hence others have called Leviathan a dragon. Therefore it can be seen that the dreadful creature called Leviathan is a certain kind of dragon, to which the devil's malice and power are suitably joined. But Behemoth is called that because many are called with him. For Behemoth is said to sound like many in Latin. Hence it can be understood with associates and ministers, and rightly so, as if it is said of those who are not from God. However, some people say that Leviathan is interpreted as an addition. Because, therefore, it did not stand in truth, and exceeding the measure of presumption, it adds to itself pride, as if it exceeds the good of nature into the swelling and disease of elation. Therefore, the addition is called: a term made from the crime, it covered the condition of good nature, which God, being good, had created. And the prophet Isaiah prophesies about it, saying: On that day, whether during the time of Christ's passion or at the coming of his judgement: On that day, therefore, the Lord will brandish his sharp, great, and mighty sword against the sea monster Leviathan, against the twisting sea monster Leviathan, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea. This is the same thing that another prophet says to God: You have broken the sea with your power. You crushed the head of the dragons upon the waters. This very same devil is described as a head with its members, and his body, and scales are recounted as being joined together by an unbreakable bond. Therefore, the Lord said to Job, this Leviathan, a typical dragon, should not rule over the waters of the nations, perhaps you can extract him from the sea of the peoples, whom I have purposed to extract and dry up by the hook of my power, as was said above, through the faith of believers. According to this interpretation, that which the Lord also says in the Gospel is true: 'When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace.' In the first coming of Christ, this was accomplished through the grace of his redemption, so that they would be delivered from the company of the devil and the dominion of the people. But in his second coming, all power of the devil is to be taken away, since the sea, that is, the world, will no longer exist, and the race of his accomplices will perish from the earth. When the crime of that person is sought, and is not found, as long as the Lord reigns forever and ever, and the inventors of death and of resurrection are swallowed up in victory. But what God says in this book, that He will draw out Leviathan with a hook, He speaks through another prophet, saying: I will spread My net over you with a multitude of people, and I will draw you into My snare. The hook and the net are considered to be the Savior Himself, the Son of God clothed in flesh. And the net can be called the preaching of the Gospel, which is spread from the rising of the sun to its setting, over a wide expanse, as the prophet also says: Great is the Lord, and so on. And he continues, extending the joy of the whole earth. This web of Christ's preaching is firmly established, solidly strengthened by the figures of the Old Testament, by the images of signs, and by many such testimonies of Scripture, as if tied together by knots. Many great monsters and powerful dragons of this impious world have attempted to tear it apart and break it, but they have not been able to, because God has laid a firm foundation that cannot be uprooted. For if God is for us, who can be against us? Therefore, according to this interpretation, the same meaning is recognized in a hook and a fishing net. So when the Lord said to Job, Can you extract Leviathan with a hook? he said to him:
And will you bind his tongue with a rope? Just as a rope is woven from multiple strands, forming a bond that can be used to bind things together, so too does the devil, from the multitude of his sins, weave for himself the bonds of sacrilege, like a rope made of blasphemies, and bind his tongue, causing his mouth to be stopped up and silenced as he speaks iniquity. And in the Proverbs of Solomon, it is written about similar things: Each person is bound by the chains of their own sins. And hence it is that the Lord in the Gospel says that the lazy and useless servant, with his hands and feet bound, is to be sent into the outer darkness, that is, into the bonds of his own sins, which he has committed, according to divine judgment, he is sent bound into punishment; which the Lord Himself demonstrated most clearly in a certain place, when He made a whip out of cords and drove them out of the temple.
Will you put a ring in his nostrils or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he beg you for mercy or speak kindly to you? Will he make a covenant with you so that you can take him as your servant forever? Can you play with him like a bird or keep him on a leash for your girls? Will traders bargain for him or divide him up among the merchants? Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears? Lay your hand on him; you will remember the battle and never do it again! Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering. No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me? Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.
Will he multiply prayers to you, or speak soft things to you? Or as others have said: Will he speak gently to you? The mind of man, proud of itself, is subject only to God, whom it knows to be its creator, and it submits itself to him alone whom its own conscience fears.
Will you strike a deal with him and accept him as your eternal servant? Although he is rebellious and excessively proud, he is ultimately compelled by the good of his own nature, which does not perish as a testimony of his just condemnation, so that he may at least acknowledge that he is a wicked servant of his creator, the Lord. This is the covenant or testament that he is commanded to enter into with God. Therefore, the Lord himself says: And you shall accept him as your eternal servant. For this is done not by any will of the soul, but by the command of divine power, and therefore it is called eternal by God, because he will never receive the adoption of the sons of God, nor that first place of angelic dignity.
Do you mock him as if he were an old man, or will you bind him with your handmaids? To such an extent, says the Lord, the strength of this dragon will be humiliated and completely worthless; so that it may be mocked and assigned to the holy angels, as has already been said. But that he is mocked as if he were a bird, let it be considered as a small and insignificant thing compared to the power of God, he wanted to show by the name of bird; and that he is said to be bound with handmaids, that is what the Lord himself said in the Gospel to his disciples: Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you. And so, they are bound and deceived by the holy souls of God, who are the servants of Christ; while they themselves and their companions are commanded by them, and are compelled to leave the bodies possessed by him: and to each one throughout the world, captivity is taken captive every day, just as it is also said in the Apocalypse, that he is bound for a thousand years, which is understood from one part to the whole, according to the Apostle who says: Little children, it is the last hour; from the time of the coming of the Lord in our flesh. Therefore he was bound: lest he seduce those to be saved by the grace and redemption of Christ. Others said: You shall bind him as a little bird, so that he may be held by the command of my empire, and he shall be handed over as one bound by power. This is the child of whom Isaiah says: The child will send out his hand from the breast and touch the hole of asps; this child, though he is a one hundred year old boy, will die through the grace of Christ, that is, he will depart from this world to God as holy and innocent. Therefore we must receive this infant, each and every one of the saints, who, born as a child of God from the font, that is, from the womb of the mother Church, suckle the Lord's commandments as milk from her breasts.
Friends meet him, merchants divide him. These friends and merchants, they should be understood as holy, even all the preachers of truth: to whom Christ the Son of God says: You are my friends. Likewise, he speaks about the same people in a parable: The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking a good pearl, and so on. They have set before the world the kingdom of God and the reward of eternal life as a most precious pearl for sale, so that each person may sell whatever they have, namely the pleasures of this present life, and exchange and buy it with these goods. Therefore, from the aforementioned friends and merchants, the body of this dragon is cut and divided, while through them a great multitude of its lost ones is separated for the faith of Christ. For many of its powerful ones and those strong in wickedness are separated from its fellowship, like members of its body being severed, as even the prophet Habakkuk says to the Lord: You have cut off the heads of the mighty in astonishment, and of whom he says again to the Lord: You have sent death upon the heads of the enemies, the death of vices indeed, so that they no longer live for themselves but for him who died and rose again for them. These are the heads of the enemies of God, that is, the princes of wicked peoples, they themselves are the kings and nobles of this spiritual dragon, who are said to be bound by the aforementioned friends and negotiators according to the translation of names and the figure of another trope: just as the prophet David says, 'To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron.' Therefore, these kings and nobles themselves are dragons and members of that dragon, of whom the prophet says to God, 'You have shattered the heads of the dragons upon the waters.'
Will you fill the bags with his skin, and the fish net with his head? All those who with the consent of malice and through imitation adhere to the devil, are rightly said to be his skins. Therefore, I believe they are called skins because they are connected to him in an inseparable bond, and can never or certainly hardly be separated from him. Therefore, the Lord says that the bags are to be filled with them.
You will place your hand upon him. Remember the war; and do not add to speak anymore. Thus it seems to me that he said: After defeating your adversary through me, you will place your hand upon him, so that you may mock him as well. Or you will place your hand upon him, as if he had said, if you consider yourself to be of his power and virtue, you will place your hand upon him, that is, if you can make him tremble and fear by the strength of your power, just as he must do to me alone: but since you cannot do this in any way, that this great dragon, powerful in wickedness, may be subject to you; remember in this tribulation of your torments against which fierce and cruel enemy you have had a war: it suffices for you that I have spoken harsh words against you, when I wanted you to know that you would not have been able to overcome and conquer this most mighty enemy of yours, unless you had been ordered by the command of my empire, and nevertheless, your soul would be guarded by me. Therefore, you were given into his power so that he would not afflict you more than your strength would allow.
Behold, his hope will deceive him, and before the eyes of all it will be cast down. When he is cast into hell, the eternal fire, in the presence of the holy angels and the innumerable multitude of blessed men, his hope, which he thought would make him strong, will be frustrated by a terrible and just judgment, and his futile and empty thoughts will be brought to nothing.