As for the earth, out of it comes bread: but under it is turned up as it were fire.
All Commentaries on Job 28:5 Go To Job 28
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
51. Judaea was wont to give bread, in that she used to set before men the words of the Law. Which same Law because the children of perdition could now no longer understand and interpret, the prophet Jeremiah bewails in the Lamentations, saying, The young children asked bread, and there was no man to break it unto them [Lam 4, 4]; but this ‘earth is overturned in its place with fire,’ because on beholding the miracles of the faithful it consumed itself with the firebrand of envy. For because envy is always used to be engendered from pride, she ‘perished in her place by fire,’ who for this reason burned with envy, because she did not abandon pride. And so ‘the earth, which first had bread, was afterwards overturned by fire,’ because the Synagogue, which set before men the commandments of God in the Law, by persecuting the new-born Church consumed itself with the fire of envy. Was it not in flames with the brands of its jealousy when on seeing the miracles of our Redeemer; it said by certain of its own, What do we? for this Man doeth many miracles? [John 11, 47] Or, surely, Ye see that we gain nothing; yea, the whole world goeth after Him. [ib. 12, 19] They saw that whereby they should have been converted, and they were thereby rendered the more froward. They sought to stifle Him, Whom they beheld give life to the dead. They held the Law in the mouth, but persecuted the Author of the Law. Therefore the earth, from which bread arose, was overturned in its place by fire. Because Judaea had in her own self first the Law that should refresh, and afterwards envy that should consume her.
