But he knows the way that I take: when he has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.
All Commentaries on Job 23:10 Go To Job 23
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
39. As if he said in plain terms, ‘I for mine own part both search myself strictly, and am not able to know myself thoroughly; yet He, Whom I have not power to see, seeth most minutely all the things that I do.’ It goes on; And He shall try me like gold which passeth through the fire.
Gold in the furnace is advanced to the brightness of its nature, whilst it loses the dross. And so like ‘gold that passeth through the fire’ the souls of the righteous are tried, which by the burning of tribulation through and through, both have their defects removed, and their good points increased. Nor was it of pride that the holy man likened himself as set in tribulation to gold, in that he who, by the voice of God, was pronounced righteous before the stroke, was not for this reason permitted to be tried that bad qualities might be cleared off, but that excellences might be heightened; but gold is purified by fire; less then than he was did he think of his own self, in that, being delivered over to suffer tribulation, he believed that he was being purified, whereas he had not any thing in him to be purified.
40. Now it is necessary for us to know, that though the mind of the righteous entertains humble thoughts touching itself, yet the several things that they do, they see to be as right as they are, while they never presume on the rightness of them. Whence it is yet further added; My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept and not declined. Neither have gone back from the commandment of his lips, and I have hid the words of his mouth in my bosom. But in the midst of all this let us see whether he thinks himself to be any thing. It follows; But He is Himself alone. By the subjoining of which sentence, he shews that amidst all the good things which he had done he believed himself to be nothing. But taking up these same words from the beginning, let us run over them as well as we are able.
