The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he opens his eyes, and he is not.
All Commentaries on Job 27:19 Go To Job 27
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
28. In harmony with which same sentence the Psalmist saith, All the foolish in heart are troubled, they have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands. [Ps. 75, 5] For in order that the rich after death may ‘find something in their hand,’ it is told to them before death, in whose hands they should place their riches. Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye .fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations. When the rich man sleepeth, he shall take nothing away with him. His goods when he dieth he would take away with him, if whilst he lived, at the voice of him that besought him, he had taken them home to himself; for all things earthly, which we part with by keeping, we keep by bestowing; our patrimony which retained is lost, whilst paid out of hand it remains. For we cannot long continue together with our goods. Since either we by dying abandon them, or they by perishing as it were abandon us while living. And so it remains for us to manage that things doomed unreservedly to perish we may compel to pass over into a reward that does not perish.
29. But that is very much to be wondered at that is spoken, When he sleepeth, he shall open his eyes and shall find nothing. For in order to sleep we close our eyes, and on waking up open them. But on this point, forasmuch as man consists of soul and body, while it is called sleep of one subject, the waking of the other is shewn to view; because when the body falls asleep in death, then the soul wakes up in a true acquaintance. And so ‘the rich man sleeps, and opens his eyes,’ because, when he dies in the flesh, his soul is compelled to see what it despised to foresee. Then indeed it wakes up in true acquaintance; then it sees that all is nothing that it possessed; then it finds itself empty; whereas it used to rejoice in being full of good things above the rest of the world. It’ sleeps, and takes away nothing along with it,’ nothing surely, of the goods that it possessed. For the sin of the goods is carried on along with it, though every thing for the sake of which sin was committed be left behind here. So then let him go now, and swell himself out with good things gotten, let him lift himself up above the rest of the world, and Pride himself in having what his neighbour has not. The time will come sooner or later that he shall awake, and then learn how empty that was which he had possessed in sleep. For it often happens to the needy whilst sleeping that he sees himself lich in a dream, and on the strength of those acquisitions uplifts his mind, is overjoyed that he has what he had not, and now counts to be disdainful of those whom ,it grieved him to be disdained by; but that suddenly waking up he is grieved that he has woke up, in that meanwhile though but while sleeping he possessed the semblance of riches. For he groans directly under the weight of poverty, and is wrung by the straitness of his indigence, and this so much the worse, as though but for the shortest space of time he was even thus emptily lich. Thus, thus, too surely is it with the rich ones of this world, who are bloated with good things acquired. They have no knowledge to do right by their abundance; as persons asleep .they are rich; but on waking up they find their poverty, because they ‘bring nothing with them’ to that Judgment, that is calculated to remain, and in proportion as they are now lifted up the higher for a brief space, the more heavily they groan against themselves for everlasting. So then let him say, He shall open his eyes, and shall find nothing. Because he then ‘opens those eyes’ to punishments, which here he kept closed to mercy. He ‘opens his eyes’ and he ‘finds not’ the fruit of pity, in that he kept them shut here, when he did ‘find’ it. Those also are slow in ‘opening their eyes,’ who, as Wisdom is witness, are described as going in the time of their condemnation to say, What hath pride profited us? or what good hath riches with, our vaunting brought us? All these things are passed away like a shadow, and as a post that hasteth by. That the things which they possessed were worthless and transitory they now learn by their loss, which same, so long as they were theirs, seemed to their foolish hearts at once great and lasting. It was late that the rich man ‘opened his eyes,’ when he saw Lazarus at rest, whom he scorned to see lying at his door. He understood There the thing that here to do he refused: by his condemnation he was forced to learn what it was that he lost, when he did not own his neighbour being in want.
