Let my enemy be as the wicked, and he that rises up against me as the unrighteous.
All Commentaries on Job 27:7 Go To Job 27
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
12. In Holy Writ, the words’ like as’ and’ as if’ are sometimes put not for a likeness, but for the reality. Whence we have that; And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father. [John 1, 14] And thus here also ‘like,’ and ‘as’ seem to be said rather for the sake of affirmation than similitude. Now between the ungodly and the wicked man there is wont to be this difference sometimes, that every ungodly man is unrighteous, but not every unrighteous man ungodly. For the’ ungodly’ is put instead of unbeliever, i.e. a stranger to the godliness of religion. But a man is called unrighteous, who by wrongness of practice is at variance with righteousness, even if he does perhaps bear the name of the Christian Faith. Therefore by the typical voice of blessed Job, Holy Church, which is subject to some gainsaying the right Faith, avouches that she has an ‘ungodly man her enemy.’ But because she has to bear others under the cloke of the faith within her pale living in bad practices, she abhors the ‘unrighteous’ man as being her adversary. But if’ like’ and ‘as’ it is right we should understand as put on account of ‘likeness,’ Holy Church brands by a likeness to the ungodly those whom she is subject to living in a carnal manner within her pale. For within her bounds he is an enemy to her, who whilst he maintains himself a believer by professions, denies it by practices. And because he accounts him as an unbeliever, who, whilst set within her pale in semblance, only assails her with mischief of evil doing, he rightly says, Mine enemy is like the ungodly, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous. As though he said in plain speech; ‘He is at variance with me in faith as well, who does not agree with me in practice.’
