If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand.
All Commentaries on Job 9:3 Go To Job 9
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
3. In Holy Scripture, the number a thousand is wont to be taken for totality. Hence the Psalmist saith, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations; when it is sufficiently plain that from the very beginning of the world up to the coming of our Lord no more than seventy-seven generations are reckoned up by the Evangelist. What then is represented in the number a thousand, save, until the bringing forth of the new offspring, the complete whole of the race foreseen. Hence it is said by John, And shall reign with Him a thousand years [Rev. 20, 6]; for that the reign of Holy Church is made complete by being perfected in entireness. Now forasmuch as a unit being multiplied is brought to ten, and ten being taken into itself is expanded to one hundred, which again being multiplied by ten is extended to a thousand, since we set out with one to get to one thousand, what is here denoted by the designation of ‘one’ but the commencement of good living? what by the fulness of the number ‘a thousand,’ but the perfection of that good life? Now to contend with God is not to ascribe to Him but to take to one's self the glory of one's goodness. But let the holy man consider that the man who has already received even the chiefest gifts, if he is lifted up for what has been vouchsafed him, parts with all that he had received, and let him say, If he will contend with Him, he cannot answer Him one of a thousand. For he, that ‘contends’ with his Maker, is unable to ‘answer Him one of a thousand,’ in that the man that sets himself up on the score of perfection, proves that be lacks the very beginning of good living. For we cannot ‘answer Him one of a thousand,’ since when we are lifted up for perfection of good life, we shew that we have not so much as begun this. Now we are then more really moved by our weakness, when by reflection, we are led to form an estimate how infinite is the power of the Judge.
