Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come into it.
All Commentaries on Job 3:7 Go To Job 3
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
39. There are some men that not only never bewail what they do, but who do not cease to uphold and applaud it, and verily a sin that is upheld, is doubled. And against this it is rightly said by one, My son, hast thou sinned? add not again thereto. [Ecclus. 21, 1] For he ‘adds sin to sin,’ who over and above maintains what he has done amiss; and he does not ‘leave the night alone,’ who adds the support of vindication also to the darkness of his fault. It is hence that the first man, when called in question concerning the ‘night’ of his error, would not have the same ‘night’ to be ‘solitary,’ in that while by that questioning he was called to repentance, he added the props of self-exculpation, saying, The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat; i.e. covertly turning the fault of his transgression upon his Maker; as if he said, ‘Thou gavest me occasion of transgressing, Who gavest me the woman.’ It is hence that in the human race the branch of this sin is drawn out from that root so far as to this present time, that what is done amiss should be yet further maintained. Let him say then, Let that light be solitary, and not worthy of any praise. As though he besought in plain words, ‘Let the fault that we have done remain alone, lest while it is praised and upheld, it bind us a hundredfold more in the sight of our Judge. We ought not indeed to have sinned, but would that, by not adding others, we would even leave those by themselves, which we have committed.'
40. But here it is to be impressed upon our minds, that he in a true sense bears hard upon his sin, whose heart is no longer set to the love of the present state of being by any longing for prosperity, who sees how deceitful are the caresses of this world, and reckons its smiles as a kind of persecution.
