Iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted out of the ore.
All Commentaries on Job 28:2 Go To Job 28
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
44. Heretics are used to pride themselves against us by the self-priding of their righteousness, and to boast high their practices with the swelling of ostentation, and ourselves, as we have said, they impeach either for being or having been bad persons. Accordingly in a most humble confession, and in a truthful defence against those, the holy man speaks, saying, Iron is taken out of the earth. As if he said in plain speech; ‘men of strength, who by the sharpest swords of their tongues are become iron in this pitched battle of the defending of the faith, were one time but’ earth ‘in the lowest sphere of actions.’ For to man on his sinning it was spoken; Earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou return. But ‘iron is taken out of the earth,’ when the hardy champion of the Church is separated from an earthly course of conduct, which he before maintained. Accordingly he ought not to be contemned in any thing whatever, that he was, who has already begun to be that which he was not. Was not Matthew found in the earth, who, involved in earthly matters, served the business of the receipt of custom? But having been taken out of the earth, he was strengthened into the forcibleness of iron, in that by his tongue, as by the sharpest sword, the Lord in the enforcing of the Gospel pierced the hearts of unbelievers. And he that before was weak and contemptible by his earthly occupations, was afterwards made strong for heavenly preachings. Hence it is yet further subjoined;
And the stone being melted with heat is turned into brass.
45. Then is ‘the stone dissolved with heat,’ when the heart that is hard and cold to the fire of divine love is touched by that same fire of divine love, and melted in the glowing warmth of the Spirit, that to the life that follow’s it should bum with the heat of its longings, which life on hearing of before, it remained uninfluenced. By the power of which same heat, he is at once softened down to love and invigorated to practice, that as before he was hard in the love of the world, so he should afterwards give himself out strong unto the love of God, and what he declined to give ear to before, he should henceforth begin both to believe and to preach. And so, the stone being dissolved with heat is turned into brass, because the hardened mind, being melted by the fire of love from Above, is changed to true strength. So that the sinner that was before unmoved should afterwards be made at once strong in respect of authority, and sounding in respect of preaching. Which is well spoken by Isaiah; They that trust in the Lord shall change their strength. [Is. 40, 31] We ‘change our strength,’ when being converted, we eschew the present scene of things with as much power and might as we before were seeking it. But because the foregoing life is unfairly by adversaries counted to the character of Catholics
