CHAPTER 20

How the Creator of the Universe, the Word of God, answered Job, and is said to have appeared to Him, just as He (b) did to the Fathers.

[Passages quoted, Job xxxviii. 1, 4, 7, 8, 14-17; xlii. 4-6.]

IT is easy to distinguish that the words before us are the Words of the Lord the Creator, not only from what has previously been considered but from the impression they make on you. And, moreover, that the passages: "Hast thou gone to the source of the sea, and trodden in the footprints of the deep?" and: "Do the gates of death open to thee for fear, and did the fortress of hell quake when they saw thee?" prophesy our Saviour's descent into Hades I will prove in the proper place, only now . remarking that it is more reasonable to refer this passage to God the Word than to the God of the Universe. 

(248) Job certainly afterwards bears witness that he has seen with his own eyes, as the fathers did the Lord Who spoke to him through the whirlwind and the clouds, saying:

"Hear me, Lord, that I also may speak: and I will ask thee, and teach thou me. I have heard of thee by the report of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I have humiliated myself and have melted, and I reckon myself dust and ashes." 

But how could a soul clothed in flesh and mortal eyes (b) behold the Most High God, the Being beyond the Universe, the Unchangeable and Unbegotten Essence, unless we could say that here also God the Word proved to be Lord in varying instances shews Himself as passing from His own proper majesty? This we may learn to be so from the oracles themselves, in which the Lord again narrating the story of the devil, under the name of the Dragon, to Job, insisted, Do not you fear because he is prepared for me? For what Lord ought we to think that the Dragon (c) was prepared, but our Saviour the Divine Word? He it was that destroyed the Prince of this world, who of old besieged the human race, loosing the pains of death, as - 265 - He Himself also shews, saying: "Didst thou come to the spring of the sea, and troddest thou the traces of the depth? Did the doors of death open to thee in fear, and the warders of hell seeing thee tremble?" and He naturally gave this answer to Job after the great trial and contest through which He had gone, teaching him that though he has struggled more than his share, a greater and sterner (d) battle and contest is reserved for the Lord Himself against the time of His Coming to earth to die.