My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest.
All Commentaries on Job 30:17 Go To Job 30
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
57. If we mark the history by itself, the case appears plain, because the body of the holy man, through the hollows of ulcers, a swarming multitude of worms was wounding. But if we dive into the mystery of the allegory, what are denoted by ‘the bones,’ but the strong ones severally in the body of Holy Church? Who, as it were, by their solidity hold together the members, while they bear with stedfastness the practices of those going weakly. But when the heat of the last tribulation is grown to a head against her, in the night season her bone is pierced with pangs; because sometimes being overcome with torments, even the very persons let themselves run off to faithlessness, who seemed to be keeping fast others to the faith. Therefore she says, In the night season my bone is pierced with pangs. As though she said in plain words, ‘Pressed with the darkness of tribulation, they are so penetrated with affliction, that even the very persons, who had within me the firmness of strength, have now, as it were, a kind of piercing of fear.’ And it is well said, And they that eat me take no sleep; because the evil spirits, that ‘eat up’ all the carnal out of the Church, know not how to rest from tempting in proportion as they are not burthened with any weight of flesh. But the persecutors of Holy Church, because they are very corrupt, would that they were few in number!
