Your hands have made me and fashioned me together totally; yet you do destroy me.
All Commentaries on Job 10:8 Go To Job 10
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
74. As if He said to Him in humility; ‘Whereas that which I have done being submitted to a just examination is not meet for the propitiating of Thee, consider in Thy mercy lest that should perish which is Thy doing [quod fecisti].’ By which same words too the wicked doctrine of Manichaeus [some Mss. ‘of Manes.’] is destroyed, who feigning that there are two Principles, strives to maintain that the spirit was made by God, but the flesh by Satan. For the holy man, being full of the grace of the prophetic Spirit, views events to come long afterwards, and foreseeing the shoots of divers errors, treads them underfoot, saying, Thine hands have made me and fashioned me altogether round about. For he, who declares himself both ‘made and fashioned altogether round about’ by God, leaves to the race of darkness no part either in his spirit or in his flesh. For he described himself as ‘moulded’ [plasmatum] in virtue of the interior image, but he spoke of being ‘fashioned together round about’ in so far as he consists of a covering of flesh.
75. But it is to be observed, that herein that he declares himself made by the hands of God, he is setting before the Divine Mercy the dignity of his creation; for though all things were created by the Word, Which is coeternal with the Father, yet in the very account of the Creation, it is shewn how greatly man is preferred above all animals, how much even above things celestial, yet without sense. For, He commanded, and they all were created. [Ps. 148, 5] But when He determines to make Man, this which is to be thought of with awe is premised; Let Us make man in Our Image, after Our Likeness. [Gen. 1, 26] Nor yet is it written concerning him as it is of the rest of things created; Let there be, and it was so. [ver. 6. 7.] Nor as the waters the fowl, so did the earth produce Man; but before he was made it was said, Let Us make; [ver. 20] that whereas it was a creature endowed with reason that was being made, it might seem as if it were made with counsel. As if by design he is formed out of earth, and by the inspiration of his Creator set erect in the power of a vital spirit in this way, that he who was made after the image of his Creator, might have his being not by word of command, but by the greater eminence of action. That, then, which Man in the work of his creating received preeminently upon earth above all other creatures, this, being laid under the scourge, he represents to the pitifulness of his Artificer, saying, Thine hands have made me and fashioned me altogether round about: and dost Thou thus suddenly cast me down? As if it were in plain words; ‘Why dost Thou despise me with such light esteem, when Thou createdst me with such circumstances of dignity? and him whom by reason Thou settest above all other things, why dost Thou by sorrow set below them?’ Yet this preeminence, that we possess, shines bright by reason of the ‘Likeness,’ but is very far removed from the perfection of blessedness by reason of the flesh, in that whilst the spirit mixes with dust, it is in a certain measure united with weakness. Which weakness blessed Job presents to the pitifulness of the Judge.
