Remember, I pray you, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?
All Commentaries on Job 4:7 Go To Job 4
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
34. Whether it be heretics, of whom we have said that the friends of blessed Job bore an image, or whether any of the froward ones, they are as blameable in their admonitions, as they are immoderate in their condemnation. For he says, Who ever perished being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off? Since it often happens that in this life both ‘the innocent perish,’ and ‘the righteous are ‘utterly cut off,’ yet in perishing they are reserved to glory eternal. For if none that is innocent perished, the Prophet would not say, The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart. [Is. 51, 1] If God in His providential dealings did not carry off the righteous, Wisdom would never have said of the righteous man, Yea, speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding. [Wisd. 4, 11] If no visitation ever smote the righteous, Peter would never foretell it, saying, For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God. [1 Pet. 4, 17] They then are really righteous, who are furnished forth by the love of the Country above to meet all the ills of the present life. For all that fear to endure ills here, for the sake of eternal blessings, clearly are not righteous men. But Eliphaz does not take account either that the righteous are cut off, or that the innocent perish here, in that oftentimes they that serve God, not in the hope of heavenly glory, but for an earthly recompense, make a fiction in their own head of that which they are seeking after, and, taking upon themselves to be instructors, in preaching earthly immunity, they shew by all their pains what is the thing they love.
