I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and laid my strength in the dust.
All Commentaries on Job 16:15 Go To Job 16
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
20. In her weak members Holy Church is ‘broken with breach upon breach,’ when sin is added to sin, that transgression should be brought to a more dreadful pitch. Thus for him, whom avarice forces to robbery and robbery leads into deceit, so that the sin committed is further defended by falsehood, how else is it with this man, but that he is broken with breach upon breach? When too it is well said by the Prophet; Cursing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, adultery, have overflowed, and blood toucheth blood. [Hos. 4, 2] For by the title of ‘blood’ sin is used to be denoted; whence one who longs to be set free from sin exclaims in penitence, Deliver me from blood [sanguinibus]. [Ps. 51, 14] So ‘blood toucheth blood,’ when sin has heaped on sin; and whereas when breach is added to breach, the powers of our old enemy are the more terribly increased against us, it is rightly added;
He runneth upon me like a giant.
21. The enemy is easy to be resisted, if he is not consented to, whether in many backslidings, or in one for a continuance. But if the soul has been accustomed to submit to his persuasions, the oftener it subjects itself to him, it makes him the harder to itself to bear, so that it has not the power to struggle against him; in that our wicked adversary, ‘like a giant,’ fights against it, when it is vanquished by bad habit: yet very often Holy Church, even after sins have been committed, brings back the minds of the faithful to penitence, and cleanses away the sins of practice by the efficacy of a voluntary self-chastening.
