If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw I had help in the gate:
All Commentaries on Job 31:21 Go To Job 31
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
32. It was the custom with those of old that the elders should sit at the gate to make out by judicial trial the quarrels of persons at strife, in order that the city, in which it was befitting that they should dwell in concord, they should never enter at variance. And hence the Lord saith by the Prophet, Establish judgment in the gate. [Amos 5, 15] In this place then what is set forth by the title of the ‘gate’ but that thing which was used to be done in the gate? For as we talk of the ‘camp fighting’ instead of this, that there is fighting from the camp, so judgment that used to be tarried on in the gate, is called ‘the gate.’ Thus he ‘sees himself uppermost in the gate,’ who sees that by the title of just dealing he is of the better side in judgment. Accordingly, blessed Job, because he did not even then put forth his hand against the fatherless, when even by the claim of justice he saw himself the better one, teaching to us the rule of fear, says, If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, even when I saw myself uppermost in the gale. As though he said in plain words, ‘Not even then had I the mind to enforce by power the interests of my own advantage against the fatherless, when I saw myself even by justice the better one in judgment.’ For holy men, when they are subject to matters of disputings with inferior persons, whilst they are afraid to bear heavily even in the least circumstances, never shun to be themselves pressed upon contrary to justice. For they know that all human justice is charged to be injustice, if it be judged strictly by God. Whence that thing which is at their command, they guard against exacting with passionateness, lest it chance that the Righteousness Above try their actions with exactness. But that they may be able to be found just in the Divine Inquest, very often before the judgments of men they suffer themselves to be borne hard upon even unjustly. Now in relating the lofty height of his life, they are many and wonderful things that blessed Job delivered. But because it very often happens that the human mind refuses to believe the good things that it does not know how to put in practice, he directly adds the sentence of a curse upon himself, if aught of those things which he had spoken he did not fulfil in act.
