Can you bring forth Mazzaroth in its season? or can you guide Arcturus with its children?
All Commentaries on Job 38:32 Go To Job 38
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
75. For the Father brought forth the morning star in his season, because, as it is written; When the fulness of the time was come, God sent His Son born of a woman, made tinder the Law, to redeem them that are under the Law. [Gal. 4, 4] Who being born of a Virgin, appeared as the morning star, amid the darkness of our night, because, having put to flight the obscurity of sin, He announced to us the eternal morn. But He made Himself known as the morning star, because He arose in the morn from death, and overcame, by the brightness of His light, the hideous darkness of our mortality. Who [Oxf. Mss. ‘Qui.’] is well called by John; The bright and morning star. [Rev. 22, 16] For, appearing alive after death, He became our morning star; because while He furnished us in His own person an instance of resurrection, He pointed out what light comes after. But the Lord makes the evening star to rise over the sons of earth, because He permits Antichrist to hold sway over the unbelieving hearts of the Jews, as their desert demands. And they are therefore justly subjected by the Lord to this evening star, because they chose of their own accord to be the sons of earth. For by seeking after earthly, and not heavenly things, they were so blinded as not to behold the brightness of our morning star; and while they seek for the evening star to rule over them, they are plunged in the eternal night of subsequent damnation. Hence the Lord says in the Gospel, I came in My Father’s name, and ye received Me not; another will come in his own name, and him ye will receive. [John 5, 43] Hence Paul says; Because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved, for this cause God shall send them the operation of error, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but consented to iniquity. [2 Thess. 2, 10-12] The evening star therefore would never rise over them, if they had wished to be the sons of heaven. But while they seek after visible things, having lost the light of the heart, they are in darkness under the prince of night.
76. But if we examine this in a moral sense, we find how it is daily occurring; because both the morning star doubtless rises on the Elect, and the evening star, by God’s permission, rules over the reprobate. For there is one and the same word of God in the mouth of the preacher. But while these hear it with joy, and those with envy, they change for themselves the brightness of the morning star into the darkness of the evening. Whilst these humbly receive the voice of holy preaching, they open, as it were, the eyes of the heart to the light of the star. But whilst those feel envy at one who advises them well, and seek not the cause of their salvation, but the glory of boasting, when the evening of their iniquity bursts forth, they close their eyes in the sleep of death. By a secret sentence, therefore, he who is the morning star to elect, is the evening star to reprobate hearers. Because by that holy exhortation, with which the good come back to life, the reprobate perish more fatally in sin. Whence it is well said by Paul; We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish, to the one the savour of death unto death, but to the other the savour of life unto life. [2 Cor. 2, 15. 16.] He saw then that his word, by which he beheld some roused from their iniquity, and others on the contrary lulled to sleep in their iniquity, was both the morning and the evening star to its hearers. And because this takes place by the secret judgment of God, which cannot be comprehended by men in this life, he rightly there subjoined; And who is sufficient for these things? As if he were saying; We are sufficient indeed to consider that these things occur, but we are not sufficient to investigate why they occur. Whence also, the Lord in this place, because He had said that the morning star is brought forth for some, but that the evening star rises for others, that man might not dare to scan the secret judgments of God.
