Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
Read Chapter 6
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Salt. I wonder not that you should consider my lamentations as insipid; I now find some consolation in them, ver. 7. (Calmet)
Or can. Hebrew, "or is there any taste in the white of an egg? "(Protestants) or in blue milk? (Mercer) or "in the spittle, which a man swallows in a dream? "See Isaias xxviii. 8. If pain did not extort these complaints, should I find any pleasure in them? (Calmet)
Septuagint, "is there any taste in vain words? "Can I hear your arguments without indignation? (Haydock) (Menochius)
Some manuscripts add, "For to a hungry soul even bitter things appear to be sweet "from Proverbs xxvii. 7. (Calmet)
“Can anyone taste poisonous food without dying?” For it is hard to seek that which torments or to follow that which destroys life. But very often the life of the righteous stretches itself to such a height of virtue that it rules within in the citadel of interior reason. It also rules without. By bearing with it, reason leads the folly of some to conversion. For we must bear with the weakness of those we are striving to draw on to strong things. No one can lift up another without bending down from the uprightness of his position. But when we empathize with the weakness of another, we are strongly encouraged to face courageously our own weaknesses. The result is that from the love of future things, the soul prepares itself to meet the ills of present times and watches for the hurts of the body that it used to fear. For the soul is increasingly straitened as its heavenly aspirations are enlarged. When it perceives how great is the sweetness of the eternal land, it fervently loves for the...
15. For the words and the practices of the carnal introduce themselves like food into our minds, so as to be swallowed up in the belly of complacence. But any of the Elect eateth not that which is ‘unsavory,’ for setting apart in judgment the words and the deeds of the froward, he puts them away from the mouth of his heart. Paul forbade unsavoury meat to be offered for the food of souls, when he said to his disciples, Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt. [Col. 4, 6] And to the Psalmist also the words of the children of perdition tasted unsavoury in the mouth of the heart, when he said, The wicked have related tales to [so V.] me which are not after Thy Law. [Ps. 119, 85] But often, when the words of the wicked press themselves with importunity into our ears, they beget in the heart a war of temptation. And though both reason reject and the tongue censure them, yet that is with difficulty mastered within, which without is sentenced with authority. Whence it is...
8. In the Law, the virtue of the hidden meaning is the salt of the letter. Whosoever, then, being intent upon carnal observances, refused to understand it in a spiritual sense, what else did he but eat ‘unsavoury food?’ But this ‘salt,’ ‘Truth,’ on being known, put into the food, when He taught that the savour of a hidden sense lay at the bottom of the Law, saying, For had ye believed Moses, ye might [Vulg. forsitan] have believed Me, for he wrote of Me. [John 5, 46] And again, Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another. [Mark 9, 50] But because before our Redeemer's coming, Judaea held the Law in a carnal way, the Gentile world refused to bend themselves to its precepts, which enjoined hard things. Thus it would not eat unsavoury meat. For before that it got the relish of the Spirit, it shrunk from keeping the force of the letter. For which of the Gentiles would bear this, which is therein enjoined, to cut their children's flesh for a religious service? to cut off...
Sores and pus were not enough. A new affliction is added. Job’s disease has destroyed his entire sensitivity to the extent that even his nourishment has become a torture for him. Indeed, Job says, the nauseating smell of gangrene has deprived him of the capability to distinguish sensations. Is there anything more painful than that torment? Neither sleep gave him rest nor food nourished him. “As the smell of a lion,” Job says. That wild beast, in fact, gives a horrible stench. - "Commentary on Job 6.7b"
