Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God has hedged in?
All Commentaries on Job 3:23 Go To Job 3
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
11. For ‘man's way is hid to him,’ in that though he already takes cognizance of the kind [qualitate] of life that he is leading, he does not yet know to what issue it tends. Though his affections are now fixed on things above, though he seeks them with all his longings, he is yet ignorant whether he shall persevere in the same longings. For forsaking our sins we strive after righteousness, and we know whence we are come, but we know nothing whereunto we may arrive. We know what we were yesterday, but we cannot tell what we may chance to be to-morrow. ‘Man's way then is hid to him,’ in that he so sets the foot of his labour, that, this notwithstanding, he can never foresee the issue of the accomplishment thereof.
12. Now there is also another ‘hiding of our way.’ For there are times when we are ignorant, whether the very things which we believe we do aright, are rightly done in the strict Judge's eye. For, as we have also said a long way above, it often happens that an action of ours, which is cause for our condemnation, passes with us for the aggrandizement of virtue. Often by the same act, whereby we think to appease the Judge, He is urged to anger, when favourable. As Solomon bears witness, saying, There is a way which seemeth right unto a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death. [Prov. 14, 12] Hence, whilst holy men are getting the mastery over their evil habits, their very good practices even become an object of dread to them, lest, when they desire to do a good action, they be decoyed by a semblance of the thing, lest the baleful canker of corruption lurk under the fair appearance of a goodly colour. For they know that they are still charged with the burthen of corruption, and cannot exactly discern the things that be good. And when they bring before their eyes the standard of the final Judgment, there are times when they fear the very things which they approve in themselves; and indeed they are in mind wholly intent on the concerns of the interior, yet alarmed from uncertainty about their doings, they know not whither they are going. Hence after he had said, Wherefore is light given to one that is in misery? it is with propriety added, to a man whose way is hid? As though the words were, ‘Why has that man this life's success for his portion, who knows not of his course of conduct, in what esteem it is held by his Judge. And it is rightly subjoined, And whom God hath encompassed with darkness. For man is ‘encompassed with darkness,’ since howsoever he may burn with heavenly longings, he is ignorant how it goes with him in the interior. And he is in great fear lest aught concerning himself should meet him in the Judgment, which is now hidden from himself in the aspirations of holy fervour. ‘Man is encompassed with darkness,’ in that he is closed in by the clouds of his own ignorance. Is not that man ‘encompassed with darkness,’ who most often neither remembers the past, nor finds out the future, and scarce knows the present? That wise man had seen himself to be encompassed with darkness, when he said, And with labour do we find the things that are before us; but the things that are in heaven who shall search out? [Wisd. 9, 16]
The Prophet beheld himself ‘encompassed with’ such ‘darkness,’ when he was unable to discover the interior springs of His inmost economy, saying, He made darkness His secret place. [Ps. 18, 11] For the Author of our being, in that, when we were cast out into this place of exile, He took from us the light of His vision, buried Himself from our eyes as it were ‘in the secret place of darkness.’
13. Now as often as we attentively regard this same darkness of our blind estate, we stir up the mind to lamentation. For it weeps for the state of blindness, which it is under without, if it remember in humility that it is bereft of light in the interior, and when it looks to the darkness which surrounds it, it is wrung with ardent longing for the inward brightness, and rent with thought's whole effort, and that light above, which as soon as created it relinquished, now debarred, it makes the object of its search. Whence it very often happens that that radiance of inward joy bursts out amidst those very tears of piety; and that the mind, which had lain torpid in a state of blindness, being fed with sighs, receives strength to gaze at the interior brightness.
