Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.
All Commentaries on Job 3:4 Go To Job 3
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
26. For ‘the day becomes darkness,’ when in the very commencement of the enjoyment, we see to what an end of ruin sin is hurrying us. We ‘turn the day into darkness,’ whenever by severely chastising ourselves, we turn to bitter the very sweets of evil enjoyment by the keen laments of penance, and, when we visit it with weeping, whereinsoever we sin in gratification in our secret hearts. For because no believer is ignorant that the thoughts of the heart will be minutely examined at the Judgment, as Paul testifieth, saying, Their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another; [Rom. 2, 15] searching himself within, he examines his own conscience without sparing before the Judgment, that the strict Judge may come now the more placably disposed, in that He sees his guilt, which He is minded to examine, already chastised according to the sin. And hence it is well added,
Let not God require it from above.
27. God requires the things, which He searches out in executing judgment upon them. He does not require those, which He so pardons as to let them be unpunished henceforth in His own Judgment. And so ‘this day,’ i.e. this enjoyment of sin, will not be required by the Lord, if it be visited with self-punishment of our own accord, as Paul testifies, when he says, For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged of the Lord. [1 Cor. 11, 31] ‘God's requiring our day,’ then, is His proceeding against our souls at the Judgment by a strict examination of every instance of taking pleasure in sin, in which same ‘requiring’ He then smites him the harder, whom He finds to have been most soft in sparing himself. And it follows well, Neither let the light shine upon it. For the Lord, appearing at the Judgment, illumines with His light all that He then convicts of sin. For what is not then brought to remembrance of the Judge, is as it were veiled under a kind of obscurity. So it is written, But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light. [Eph. 5, 13] It is as though a certain darkness hid the sins of penitents, of whom the Prophet saith, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. [Ps. 32, 1] Therefore, as every thing that is veiled is as it were hidden in darkness, that which is not searched out in vengeance, is not illumined with light at the Day of final account. For all those actions of ours, which He would not then visit with justice, the mercy of God in wotting of them still hideth in some sort from itself, but all is displayed in light, that is at that time manifest in the sight of all men. Let, then, this day be darkness, in this way, viz. that by penance we may smite the evil that we do. Let not the Lord require this day, neither let the light shine upon it, in this way, viz. that while we smite our own sin, He may not Himself fall thereupon with the visitations of the Final Judgment.
28. But the Judge will come Himself to pierce all things, and strike all things to the core. And because He is every where present, there is no place to flee to, where He is not found. But forasmuch as He is appeased by the tears of self-correction, he alone obtains a hiding-place from His face, who after the commission of a sin hides himself from Him now in penance.
