My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me.
All Commentaries on Job 17:1 Go To Job 17
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
32. ‘My spirit is wasted to thinness,’ by the fear of judgment; in that the minds of the Elect, the more they feel themselves to be approaching the final Judgment, tremble so much the more fearfully in the searching of their own selves; and if they ever find in themselves any carnal thoughts, they consume them by the fervour of their penance; nor do they suffer their thoughts to expand with carnal delight, in that they pass sentence and inflict punishment on themselves more rigorously in proportion as they are awaiting the strict Judge close at hand; whence it comes to pass, that they look upon their departure as always near. For the minds of the lost do many things wickedly on this account, because they suppose themselves living here for long; and so ‘the spirit of the righteous is wasted to thinness,’ but the spirit of the wicked is thickened. For in proportion as they swell out in self-elation, they have not the wearing down of the spirit: but the righteous, whilst they consider the shortness of their life, eschew the sins of pride and impurity. And hence it is added;
My days shall be shortened, and the grave only is left me.
33. For he that bethinks himself what he will be in death, is always rendered fearful in practice, and from the very cause that henceforth he does not as it were live in his own eyes, he does genuinely live in the eyes of his Creator; he goes after nothing of a nature to pass away, he withstands all the desire of the present life, and views himself as almost dead, in that he is not unaware that he is destined to die. For a perfect life is an imitation of death, which while the righteous diligently enact, they escape the snares of sins. Whence it is written, Whatsoever thou takest in hand, remember thy latter end, and thou shalt never do amiss. [Ecclus. 7, 36] And hence blessed Job, because he sees that his ‘days are shortened,’ and reflects that ‘the grave only is left him,’
