Thomas Aquinas Commentary Job 17

Job had previously shown the great number of his afflictions (Job 16:14), the humiliation of his mind (Job 16:16), his innocence (Job 16:18), and the brevity of a life definitively lost (Job 16:23), by which the wordiness of his friends is conclusively proven. In this chapter, he intends to prove these points and finally demonstrate their ignorance (Job 17:10). First, he begins to prove what he had said about the course of human life, presenting beforehand the cause of life’s shortness when he says, “My spirit will be weakened.”

The life of the body is sustained by vital spirits, which diffuse from the heart to all its members. The body lives as long as these spirits are strong within it. But when the natural caloric power (energy) begins to grow weak in the heart, these spirits diminish. By this diminishing and weakening, he 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, could be strengthened again within the confines of this mortal life, he says, “nothing remains for me but the tomb.” It is as if he is saying: Once the span of this present life is finished, nothing of this life remains for me except the grave and those things associated with it.

Next, Job shows their consolation to be vain in another way. They had consoled him by saying that sin was the cause of the adversities that had befallen him, and that if he repented, he would return to prosperity. But he rejects this, saying, “I have not sinned.” He says this because he had no remorse of conscience for any grave sin for which he might have incurred such great adversities. He even says later, “For my heart has not accused me in my whole life” (Job 27:6). Therefore, this does not contradict 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” (Job 16:18).

He then says, “and my eye lingers on bitter things.” He uses the plural “bitter things” because of the many adversities he had listed before. He says his eye “lingers” because although he has humbled himself among these bitter things and has sewn a sack over his skin (Job 16:16), the bitter things nevertheless remain. He attributes these bitter things to the eye because of the weeping they cause, which he already expressed by saying, “My face was puffed up from weeping” (Job 16:17), and again, “my eye pours out for God” (Job 16:21). His eye was weeping among the bitter things, aiming only for divine help, which is why he continues here, “Free me.”

Job understood that only God, who had placed him in the power of the evil one (Job 16:12), could free him. He was not praying to be freed from adversity in the way of those who seek earthly prosperity after hardship. Instead, he prayed to be led to high-mindedness, and so he says, “and place me near you.” Since God is the very essence of good, it is necessary that whoever is placed close to God is freed from evil. A person is placed near to God insofar as they approach Him with their mind through knowledge and love, but this happens imperfectly in our state as sojourners on earth, where we suffer attacks. Because one is placed near to God, however, one is not overcome by them.

A person is perfectly placed near to God in their mind in the state of ultimate happiness, in which they can no longer suffer attacks. Job shows that he desires this when he says, “do not let the hand of anyone fight against me.” This is because no matter how much someone might want to attack him, if he were placed perfectly near to God, no one’s attack could disturb him. This, then, was the consolation Job expected in the midst of bitter things: the hope of being placed near to God, where he would not have to fear any attacks.

Job’s prattling friends did not understand this spiritual consolation, and so he says, “You have made their hearts far from learning”—that is, far from your spiritual teaching, through which you teach one to hope for spiritual goods and to hold temporal goods in contempt. Since they place their hope only in things that are weak and time-bound, they cannot arrive at this spiritual height and be placed near to God. He therefore expresses this by saying, “yet they will not be lifted up.”

From the fact that they were far from spiritual teaching, Job concludes that Eliphaz promises only temporal goods as a consolation (Job 5:18). He expresses this by saying, “He promises plunder to his companions,” meaning the procurement of temporal goods, which can only come to one person if another loses them. Thus, the acquisition of temporal goods is compared to plundering. It is not universally true that people recover temporal prosperity after repentance, since even the good do not always enjoy it. And so he says, “the eyes of his sons will fail.” He calls “his sons” those who believe his promise and hope for temporal rewards for the good they do; but when they do not attain them, their eyes fail, as they cease from their hope.

Just as Eliphaz promised temporal goods to those doing good, he also asserted that all temporal adversities arise from the sins of the one who suffers them. Since Job had suffered many adversities, Eliphaz used him as an example to the people. Job expresses this by 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, Eliphaz used Job as an example, presuming he was being punished for sin.

However, it is characteristic of the zeal of the just to be indignant when they see the righteousness of divine judgments perverted by false doctrine. Consequently, Job shows the greatness of his zeal in two ways.

1. First, by a kind of disturbance of the mind. As Gregory says, “Vicious anger blinds the eye, but zealous anger troubles the eye.” So Job says, “My vision,”—that is, the sight of his reason, the concentration of which is disturbed by zealous anger—“has misted over in indignation.”
2. Second, zealous anger also produces a physical reaction of distress. Thus, the text of Maccabees says that when Mattathias saw the Jews sacrificing to idols, he “felt anguish and he violently trembled in the depth of his passions” . So Job adds here, “My limbs are reduced to almost nothing,” so much that a person’s body seems to pine away from distress.

One might think that this misting of sight is against justice and this anger is against innocence. To reject this, Job then says, “the just will be astonished at this.” It is as if to say: The just are rightly astonished when they see the doctrine of evil men, and he called this astonishment a “misting over.” The text continues, “and the innocent will arouse himself against the hypocrite.” This is, in effect, saying: It is not against innocence if someone is roused to anger against a hypocrite who perverts true doctrine out of a zeal for justice. And since, as has been said, zealous anger disturbs the soul but does not blind it, the just man is astonished or “misted over” by a zeal that does not withdraw from justice.

He expresses this by saying, “the just will preserve his course,” because he does not desert it out of zealous anger. Such anger does not precede reason but follows it, and so it cannot separate a person from justice. Zealous anger is useful because it makes a person rise up against evils with greater strength of soul. He expresses this by saying, “and add courage to pure hands,” being incited by zeal. And so Aristotle says in the Ethics III that anger aids courage.

After refuting Eliphaz's opinion, Job now gathers his previous points to demonstrate his thesis. First, he gets their attention by saying, "Therefore," meaning, "since what I have said is true." He then commands, "all of you"—that is, you and your fathers who have arrayed yourselves against me—"turn" from your errors "and come" to consider the truth. Once you have ascertained the truth, it will be clear how far you are from true wisdom. Therefore, he says, "and I will not find one wise man among you." He says this to curb Eliphaz's earlier boast, when he said, "what do you know that we do not" (Job 15:9 and following) and "Wise men know what they have learned from their father" (Job 15:18 and following).

Here, Job intends to show the foolishness of his friends for promising him the consolation of temporal prosperity (Job 5:15; Job 8:6; Job 11:17). Against their promises, he first argues that his life has already largely passed, saying, "my days have passed away." He then shows the evils he suffers, continuing, "my thoughts have been utterly scattered," because they are prevented from the quiet contemplation of wisdom by the bitterness of his bodily pain. He adds, "they torture my heart," because his thoughts are drawn away from the sweet contemplation of truth toward the bitterness that torments his heart.

This torment of the heart was not even interrupted by the night, which is the time set aside for rest. Therefore, he says, "They have turned night into day," because his painful reflections caused him to spend the night in sleeplessness, as if it were day. It is more painful to lose sleep at night than during the day, because during the day a person's soul is lightened by human company and the sight of daylight. Thus, as long as the night was sleepless for him, he longed for it to end quickly. He explains this by saying, "I again hope for the light after the darkness," meaning that he hopes for the light of day to return after the darkness of night.

Since Eliphaz had invited him to patiently endure all his adversities in expectation of a future reward, Job, in response, shows what seems to be left for him in the future regarding temporal things. He says, "If I am patient"—that is, if I patiently bear all these pains—nothing remains for me but the dwelling of the grave. He expresses this by saying, "my home is in the lower regions." He calls the grave "the lower regions" (Latin: infernus) according to the opinion of those he is arguing against. They did not believe that a person's soul survives after death, but that only the body remains in the grave, which they called the lower regions because it was located in the depths of the earth.

A person lying in the grave experiences darkness, both from the lack of sensation and the absence of external light, and so Job says, "In darkness I have arranged my couch." Just as a person is related to their parents at birth, so after death, lying in the grave, they are dissolved into corruption and maggots born from their body. Therefore, he says, "I have said to corruption: You are my father; and to the maggots, you are my mother, and my sister." It is as if to say: In the grave, I will have a relationship with no temporal thing other than corruption and maggots.

From this, he draws an absurd conclusion, asking, "Where then now is my hope?" It is as if to say: If I were to find my consolation in the expectation of temporal prosperity, my hope would be in vain. He then draws an even more absurd conclusion, asking, "and who appreciates my suffering?" He means that even though he endures patiently, nothing remains for him but the grave and its darkness, corruption, and maggots. If, then, his patience was meant to earn temporal goods from God, it would imply that God does not regard his patience—which is a denial of His providence.

To counter the potential objection that God might grant him temporal prosperity even in the grave, he says, almost jeeringly, "Into the last depths of hell will all of my possessions descend." This means that everything he has will be lowered into the grave, which is all that is left for him. He then asks, "Do you think that at least there I will have rest?" In other words: Should I expect earthly prosperity even in the grave? This is clearly ridiculous.