The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguises his face.
All Commentaries on Job 24:15 Go To Job 24
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
74. There is nothing to hinder but that this may be understood even after the latter, seeing that he who desires to commit adultery, seeks out the dark. But whereas it is a sentence uttered against Heretics, it is meet that this thing which is declared be understood in a mystical sense. Thus Paul says, For we are not as many that adulterate [Vulg. adulterantes] the word of God. [2 Cor. 2, 17] For the adulterer seeks not offspring, but pleasure in the act of carnal copulation. And every bad man, and that is also a slave to vain-glory, is rightly said to ‘adulterate’ the word of God, because by the sacred word of Revelation he desires not to beget children to God, but to exhibit his own knowledge. For he that is drawn to speak by lust of glory, bestows his pains rather on gratification than the production of children. And it is rightly added there, No eye shall see me; because the adultery which is committed in the interior is very hard indeed that it should be penetrated by the eye of man. Which same the froward soul commits with the more assurance, in proportion as it does not fear being seen by men, whom it may blush at. Moreover it is to be known that as he that commits adultery joins to himself unlawfully the flesh of another man’s wife, so all heretics, while they carry off the faithful soul into their own error, are as it were bearing off another’s wife, in this way; because the soul which is spiritually wedded to God and joined to Him as if in a kind of bridechamber of love, when by wicked persuasions it is led on into corruptness of doctrine, is as it were like the wife of another defiled by the corrupter. And it is well added;
And disguiseth his face.
75. It is for this reason that the adulterer ‘disguises his face;’ that he may not be known. Now every man who either in thinking or in acting lives badly, ‘disguises his face,’ because by corruptness in doctrine or in practice he is tending to this, that he should not be able to be recognised in the Judgment by Almighty God. Hence He shall say to certain persons at the end, I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity. [Matt. 7, 23] And what is the ‘face’ of the human heart, save the likeness of God? which same face the bad man ‘disguiseth,’ that he may not be able to be known, when his life discomposes either by bad deeds, or by the error of misbelief. But every such person when he sees the righteous upheld by this world’s good fortune, never ventures to prompt what is wrong to them, but if any storm of adversity falls upon those persons, he directly breaks out into words of pestilent persuasion.
