Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded cries out: yet God charges not folly to them.
All Commentaries on Job 24:12 Go To Job 24
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
68. Whereas cities (civitates) are so called from the people living together, (conviventes,) by the designation of ‘cities’ the churches of the true faith are not unfitly represented, which being settled in the different parts of the world constitute one Catholic Church, in which all the faithful thinking what is right concerning God live together in harmony. For this very harmony of people living together the Lord even by the distinguishing of places set forth in the Gospel, when being about to satisfy the people with five loaves, He bade them lie down by fifties or hundreds in ranks, so that the crowd of the faithful might take its food at once separate in places, and united in ways. For the rest of the jubilee is contained in a mystery of the number fifty, and fifty is carried twice to be brought to a hundred. Therefore because there is first rest from bad practice, that the soul may afterwards rest more perfectly in the thoughts, some lie down by fifties and some by hundreds, since there are some that already enjoy the rest of practice from evil deeds, and there are some that already enjoy the rest of the soul from evil thoughts. Wherefore since Heretics often, attaching themselves to the powerful evil-doers of this world, bear down upon the united life and harmony of the good, it is rightly said in this place, They have caused men to groan from the cities. Whom blessed Job rightly describes as ‘men,’ in that Heretics rather go about to put an end to those, who with perfect steps run in the way of God not effeminately and loosely but manfully; who when they see the wound of misbelieve inflicted in the mind of the faithful little ones, always fall back to crying out and groaning. And hence it is rightly said,
And the soul of the wounded crieth, and God suffereth him not to go unavenged.
69. For the soul of the righteous is ‘wounded,’ when the faith of the weak is unsettled, unto whom this identical thing ‘to cry’ is to be now consumed for the downfall of another. But God does not suffer him to go unavenged, in that though by just appointment he suffers an unjust thing to be done, yet He does not let that unjust thing go unavenged which He has justly permitted to be done, seeing that at once by the injustice of the sons of perdition He smites certain sins of the Elect, which He sees to be in them, and yet by Eternal Justice does not neglect to smite the injustice of those smiters.
