Whose harvest the hungry eats up, and takes it even out of the thorns, and the robber swallows up their wealth.
All Commentaries on Job 5:5 Go To Job 5
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
5. Now ‘the harvest’ of this foolish man was the crop of Sacred Writ. For the words of the Prophets are like so many grains of the ears, which the foolish man had, but did not eat. For the Jewish people indeed held the Law as far as the letter, but, from an infatuated pride, as to the sense thereof, they went hungering. But ‘the hungry eateth the harvest’ of this foolish one, in that the Gentile folk eats by taking in the words of the Law, in which the Jewish people toiled and laboured without taking them in. These hungry ones of faith the Lord foresaw, when He had said by the Evangelist, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. [Matt. 5, 6] Of these hungry ones Hannah saith prophesying, They that were full, have hired out themselves for bread, and they that were hungry were satisfied. [1 Sam. 2, 5] And as he lost the harvest, it is rightly added how the foolish man himself too perishes, where it is said, And himself shall the armed one seize. The old enemy, being ‘armed,’ seized the Jewish people, for he extinguished in them the life of faith by the darts of deceitful counsel, that in the very point, wherein they imagined themselves to be rooted in God, they might resist His dispensation. And Truth forewarns the Disciples of this, saying, Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. [John 16, 2] It follows.
And the thirsty shall drink his riches.
6. The riches of this ‘foolish’ one ‘the thirsty drink,’ in that by the streams of Sacred Writ, which the Jewish people possessed in the display of pride, the converted minds of the Gentiles are watered. And hence it is said to those same persons by the Prophet, Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no silver, come ye. [Is. 55, 1] For that the divine oracles are denoted by the word ‘silver,’ is testified by the Psalmist in these words, The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in the fire. [Ps. 12, 6] They then that ‘have no silver,’ are bidden to the ‘waters,’ in that the Gentile world which had never received the precepts of Holy Writ, is satisfied with the outpouring of Divine Revelation, which they now drink of the more eagerly, in proportion as they thirsted for it long time in a state of drought. Thus the very same Divine oracles are called at once ‘harvests’ and ‘riches;’ ‘harvests,’ because they refresh the hungering soul; ‘riches,’ because they array us in a rare richness of moral excellences. The same things are said both to be ‘eaten,’ and to be ‘drunk,’ for this reason, that whereas there are certain things therein that are obscure, which we understand not without they be interpreted, these same we in a manner swallow eating; and whereas certain other things indeed, that are easy to be understood, we so take as we find them, these we drink as if unchewed, in that we swallow them unbroken. These things we have run through in brief mode under their mystical signification, lest perchance we might seem to have passed over any thing; but because they could not be the friends of blessed Job, except in some points they also shone conspicuous for high moral worth, it remains that in their words we examine the force of their import in a moral sense, that, whilst the weight and substance of their speech is made out, it may be shewn what sort of teaching they were masters of.
