In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not the light.
All Commentaries on Job 24:16 Go To Job 24
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
76. For what is there here denoted by the title of ‘houses’ but consciences, wherein we dwell, when we do any thing, busying ourselves with it? Whence it is said to one on being healed, Return to thine own house, and shew how great things God hath done unto thee [Luke 8, 39]; i.e. henceforth, secure from the evil habit of sin, turn back to thy conscience, and be thou roused into the voice of preaching.’ And so when in the present world the righteous are brightened by the day of prosperity, to those persons the leaders of false tenets are afraid to recommend what is wrong. But they search out counsels, with all care they await the abasement of their prosperity, that in the darkness of adversity they may by their persuading dig through the minds of those, to whom whilst living prosperously they never presumed to speak wrong things, whom as soon as they see under adversity they rise up and maintain, that no otherwise saving in desert of their sins those suffer such things; because loving the glory of the present life alone, the stroke they take for condemnation. So ‘in the dark they dig through houses,’ in that the minds of the good by their mere misfortune alone to corrupt is their endeavour. Now it is well said, which they had marked in the day time, in that when they saw the righteous to have been made to shine with the light of prosperity, because they were prevented speaking, they were only at liberty for concocting malevolent designs against them. But whether it be heretics or any bad persons, they rejoice when they see the righteous in a depressed condition, whereas when they see those break forth to the height of power for ruling, they are confounded, they are filled with fears, they are consumed with misery.
