Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects: therefore despise not the chastening of the Almighty:
All Commentaries on Job 5:17 Go To Job 5
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
40. The highest virtue is to avoid sins, that they should never be done, and second to that, at least to amend them when they have been committed. But for the most part we not only never at all avoid sins that threaten, but we do not even open our eyes to them, when committed. And the mind of sinners is enveloped in the deeper darkness, in proportion as it does not see the deficiency of its own blindness. Hence it is very often brought to pass, by the bountifulness of God's gift, that punishment follows upon transgression, and stripes unclose the eyes of the transgressor, which self-security was blinding in the midst of evil ways. For the inactive soul is touched with the rod, so as to be stimulated, in order that he, that has lost, by being self-secure, the firm seat of uprightness, may mark, upon being afflicted; where he is laid prostrate; and thus to him [A.B.C.D. ‘huic’] the very sharpness of the correction becomes the source of light; and hence it is said by Paul, But all things that are proved [c], are made manifest by the light [Eph. 5, 13]; for proof of saving health lies in the force of the pain. Hence it is that Solomon saith, For healing will cause great offences to cease. [Ecc. 10, 4. Vulg.] Hence again he saith, For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. [Prov. 3, 12] Hence the Lord addresses John by the voice of the Angel [d], saying, As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. [Rev. 3, 19] Hence Paul saith, Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness, unto them that are exercised thereby. [Heb. 12, 11] Although therefore grief and happiness can never meet together, yet it is rightly said here, Happy is the man whom the Lord correcteth. For by this means, that the sinner is straitly visited with the pain of correction, he is sometimes trained to happiness, which knows no intervention of pain. It proceeds,
Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Lord.
41. Whosoever is smitten for a fault and lifted up in murmuring against the stroke, ‘reproves the chastening of the Lord.’ For he lays to His charge, that he has this put upon him unjustly. But they that are stricken, not for the cleansing of guilt, but for the testing of their fortitude, when they inquire into the causes of the stroke, must by no means be said to ‘reprove the correction of the Lord;’ for their aim is to discover in themselves what they are ignorant of. And hence blessed Job, breaking out into a voice of liberty, amidst the visitings of the scourge, the more rightly questions the judgments of the smiter concerning him, the more he is really ignorant of causes for his suffering in himself. Eliphaz, then, forasmuch as he reckoned that he was visited, not with the trial of probation, but of purification, when he spoke with freedom amidst the stripes, supposed that he ‘reproved the correction of the Lord.’ And we have said that he at the same time bears the likeness of heretics with great fitness, in that whatsoever is done aright by Holy Church, is ever, in their judgment, turned and twisted awry, to some fault of crookedness. But forasmuch as it is with a good intention that he is led to speak, yet he takes no heed to discriminate who he is speaking to, he yet further subjoins, and proclaims the dispensations of the supreme governance.
