These ten times have you reproached me: you are not ashamed that you have wronged me.
All Commentaries on Job 19:3 Go To Job 19
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
30. On enumerating the successive times of the speeches of Job’s friends, we learn that as yet they had spoken but five times. But for this reason, that he had five times heard rebukes from them, and five times himself replied to their rebukes, he says that he had been ten times confounded; because both herein, viz. that he had been causelessly reproached, he suffered deeply, and in this, that he uttered words of instruction to those that gave no ear, he underwent confusion. And so, while in hearing he held his peace, and in speaking was not heard, that person had trouble put upon him, who both in holding his peace submissively, and in speaking to them fruitlessly, experienced pain within his heart; and hence he says above, What shall I do? If I speak, my grief is not assuaged; and though I forbear, it will not depart from me.
But if we make these words refer to a type of Holy Church, it is well known that it is her great delight to keep the precepts of the Ten Commandments; and the wicked ‘confound her ten times,’ in that by all that they do wrong in their wicked principles, they forsake the precepts of the Ten Commandments, and cause confusion to the good as often as they set themselves against the words of God in their doings, It goes on;
And ye are not ashamed that ye oppress me.
31. There are some persons, whom bad principle suddenly springing up invites to the commission of wickedness, yet respect for their fellow-creatures recalls again. And very often from this, viz. that they are made ashamed outwardly, they are brought back into their own interior heart, and pass an inward judgment upon themselves; in that if they are afraid to do what is evil on man’s account, how much more ought they not even to have longed after what is evil, on God’s account, Who sees all things? And in the case of these persons it is brought to pass, that they correct greater evil by inferior good, i.e. interior sin by exterior shame. Again, there are some, who, when once they have brought themselves to contemn God in their hearts, despise the judgments of their fellow-creatures much more, and all the evil that they long after, they do not blush to execute boldly, which persons secret wickedness invites to the commission of sin, and outward shame holds not back; as it is said also of a certain wicked judge, Which feared not God, neither regarded man. [Luke 18, 2] Hence too it is said of certain persons sinning with shameless effrontery; And they have declared their sin as Sodom. [Is. 3, 9] Thus very often there are such persons enemies of Holy Church, persons who are not withheld from committing wicked things, either by the fear of God, or regard of man; and it is well said to these by blessed Job, And ye are not ashamed that ye oppress me; seeing that though it was wrong to have wished bad things, it is worse not to be ashamed of things wrongly desired.
