When I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,
All Commentaries on Job 38:9 Go To Job 38
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
44. This tumultuous sea, (our heart, namely, agitated by thoughts,) is covered with a cloud; because it is so obscured by the confusion of its own restlessness, as not clearly to behold inward peace. This sea is covered with darkness as with swaddling clothes, because it is still kept from the contemplation of sublime truths, by its weak and tender senses. Let us behold Paul covered as it were with a kind of darkness, as with swaddling clothes, when he says, We now see through a glass darkly: but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known. [l Cor. 13, 12] For did he not perceive that he was a child in the understanding of heavenly things, he would not have first mentioned, on this point, a comparison of his age, saying, When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. [1 Cor. 13, 11] We therefore then attain to the strength of youth, when we behold with strong sight that life to which we are tending. But now, since the keenness of our sight is dazzled, through its infirmity, by the light within, our mind is, as it were, held bound by swaddling clothes.
