To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, in which there is no man;
All Commentaries on Job 38:26 Go To Job 38
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
50. To rain upon the earth without man in the desert, is to preach the word of God to the Gentile world. For whilst it retained no worship of the Godhead, and shewed in itself no appearance of good works, it was plainly a desert. And because there was therein no lawgiver, nor any one who could seek God in a reasonable way, there was, as it were, ‘no man;’ and it remained as if occupied by beasts alone, void of men. Of this land of the desert it is said elsewhere, He made a way in the desert. [Is. 43, 19] Of this preaching vouchsafed to the Gentiles, the Psalmist witnesses, saying, He made rivers in the desert. [Ps. 107, 33] But we must observe, that after the heat was divided over the earth, the most violent shower received its course, that it might rain in the desert. Because after the harshness of persecution became dreadful in Judaea, so as not only not to receive the faith, but even to assail it with the sword, every preacher who had been sent to Israel, turned aside to summon the Gentiles. Whence the holy Apostles say to the persecuting Hebrews whom they abandon, We ought first to preach the word of God to you, but because ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. [Acts 13, 46] When the heat, then, has been divided, the land which is desert, and without man, is watered; because, when the persecution of the faithful had spread abroad in Judaea, the Gentile world, long since abandoned, and estranged, as it were, from the infusion of reason, is watered by the drops of preaching. But in what state the Gentile world was still found by the preachers, is shown.
