For what pleasure has he in his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off in the midst?
All Commentaries on Job 21:21 Go To Job 21
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
60. Not that we ought so to understand it as that this wicked one, after he is condemned to everlasting punishment, shall never think of ‘his house,’ i.e. of his relations, whom he has left; since ‘Truth’ tells us by His own lips, that the rich man, who was buried in hell, even in the midst of punishment had care and concern touching his five brethren, whom he had left. [Luke 16, 28] For every sinner will turn wise in punishment, who continued foolish in sin, because being now wrung with anguish there, he opens his eyes to reason, which here being devoted to pleasure he kept shut; and under the torturing of punishment it is forced from him to learn wisdom, who here by pride blinding him made himself foolish. Which person, however, his wisdom will then no longer avail, in that here, where he ought to have acted after the dictates of wisdom, he lost the opportunity. For he covets as the sovereign good here to have progeny of his race, to fill his house with servants and with substance, and to live long in this corrupt condition of the flesh. But if perchance any thing has come into his wishes, which however he cannot obtain except with the offending of his Creator, his mind is disturbed for a while, and he considers that, if he does aught here to incur his Creator’s being offended, he is smitten in his house, children, life. But prompted by his pride, he directly hardens himself, and whatever infliction he may feel in his house, or whatever infliction in his life, he minds it nothing, so long as he can accomplish the things he has projected, and whilst he lives, he never ceases to compass his pleasures. For see, his house is struck on account of sin; but what does it concern him about his house after him? See, for the avenging of his evil doing, the length of life, which he might have had, is shortened; but what does it concern him of the number of his months be cut off in the midst? Even in that thing therefore the sinner sets himself stiffly against God, in which Almighty God breaks in pieces his stiffness; and not even the smiting inflicted brings down the mind, which stubbornness on deliberation hardens in resistance to God. And observe how heavy the heinousness of the sin, at once to set before the mind punishment for sin, and yet not even from fear of torment to bend the neck of the heart beneath the yoke of our Maker! But see, when we hear these things said, the question occurs to our mind, why the Almighty and Merciful God permitted the faculty of reason in the human mind to fall into such blindness?
