Is there any number to his armies? and upon whom does not his light arise?
All Commentaries on Job 25:3 Go To Job 25
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
18. In the cognizance of human reason there is not any number of the spirits above, in that it cannot tell how great is that concourse of the Invisible Host, whereof it is said by Daniel, Thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. [Dan. 7, 10] The number of the citizens above is represented as infinite and definite, in order that that which relatively to God is capable of being numbered may be shewn relatively to man to be incapable of being numbered. Though it is one thing ‘to stand before,’ and another thing to ‘minister to.’ For those Powers stand before Him without a doubt, which never go forth for the communicating things to men. But those ‘minister to’ Him, who come for discharging the offices of bearers of tidings; yet these same beings also, by the act of contemplation, are not withdrawn from the interior world. And because they are more in number that ‘minister’ than those that preeminently ‘stand before Him,’ the number of those so ‘standing in presence’ is represented as being definite, but of those that ‘minister’ as indefinite.
19. Now the Angelical spirits we rightly call ‘the soldiers’ of God, because we are not unaware that those war against the powers of the air, which same conflicts however they carry on not by labour but by authority; for whatsoever thing, in acting against impure spirits, they desire for, by the aid of Him Who ruleth all things, they are equal to. So of this army when our King was born it is written, And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host. [Luke 2, 13] Unto which same heavenly host the number of the Elect of men too is joined, who by the lofty aspirations of the mind are set free from the bondage of an earthly conversation. Concerning whom it is said by Paul, No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life. Which same though now they be shewn few in number, yet in the invisible country they reign innumerably many, in that though by comparison with the evil-minded they are few, yet in the concourse of their assemblage they cannot be any way measured. But because the goodness of those soldiers is set firm not by their own powers, but by the inspiration of grace from Above, it is rightly added,
And upon whom doth not His light arise?
20. For ‘the light’ of God is preventing grace, which if it never arose of free gift in our heart, assuredly our mind would remain dim in the darkness of its sins.
