He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
All Commentaries on Job 19:9 Go To Job 19
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
42. That all this suits the person of the blessed man set in the midst of tribulation, there can be no doubt; but, since the words of the historical account are plain, they do not require explaining after the letter, therefore they have to be traced out in their mystical senses. Thus he says, He hath stripped me of my glory. For the glory of each individual is his righteousness. Now just as a garment protects from the cold, so does righteousness defend from death; hence righteousness is not improperly likened to a garment, where it is said by the Prophet; Let Thy priests be clothed with righteousness. [Ps. 132, 9] But seeing that in the season of her tribulation this garment of righteousness, which covers her in the sight of God, is lost to Holy Church in her members that go weakly, let it be rightly said; He hath stripped me of my glory, i.e. righteousness has been taken away from the weak, whereas it could never possibly have been taken away from them, if it had been infixed in them from the ground of the heart, but for this reason it was possible to be taken away from them, because it was attached to them outwardly, like a garment. Wherein the question offers itself, how they could be called members of Holy Church, who were capable of losing the righteousness which they seemed to maintain. But it is necessary for us to know, that very often righteousness is lost for a while by her weakly members, but when they are afterwards brought back to penitence in the acknowledgment of their fault, they attach themselves to that very righteousness which they had lost more strongly than was supposed credible. And it is yet further added thereby, and taken the crown from my head. As the head is the first part of the body, so the leading part of the interior man is the mind. Now the crown is the reward of victory, which is set from Above, in order that he that has contended should be rewarded; and so because many persons, under the pressure of adversities, do not hold out in the contest, in these Holy Church as it were ‘loses a crown from her head:’ for ‘a crown on the head’ is the reward from Above in the mind; there are a great many who whilst they are pressed with adversities, neglect to take thought of the rewards above, and cannot reach to the completion of victory; in such, then, ‘the crown is taken from the head,’ in that the heavenly and spiritual reward is taken away from the aim of the mind, that they should henceforth go after the externally peaceful, nor look out for the eternal rewards, which they used to have at heart.
43. Or otherwise, ‘the head’ of the faithful is not inappropriately taken to mean the priests, in that they are the first part of the Lord’s members; and hence it is expressed by the Prophet, that ‘the head and the tail’ are rooted out, in which same place both by the title of the ‘head’ we have the priests denoted, and by the designation of the ‘tail’ the reprobate prophet. Therefore ‘the crown is taken from the head,’ when even they abandon the heavenly rewards, who seemed to have the lead in this body of the Church; and it generally happens that, when the leaders fall, the army, that followed, is the wider worsted; and hence directly after the ills to the greater ones, going on about the manifold undoing of the Church.
