Who has let the wild donkey go free? or who has loosed the bonds of the wild donkey?
All Commentaries on Job 39:5 Go To Job 39
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
66. Nor let any consider it unbecoming that the Incarnate Lord can be typified by such an animal; whilst it is admitted by all that He is spoken of, in Holy Scripture, as, in a certain sense, both a worm and a beetle. As it is written; But I am a worm, and no man. [Ps. 22, 6] And as it is said by the Prophet in the Septuagint, A beetle cried out from the wood. [Hab. 2, 11. LXX.] Since then He is typified by the mention of such vile and abject things, what is said offensively of Him, of Whom it is admitted that nothing is said appropriately? For He is called a lamb, but it is for His innocence. He is called a lion, but it is for His might. He is also sometimes compared to a serpent, but it is for His death, or for His wisdom. And He can therefore be spoken of figuratively by all these, because none of all these can be essentially believed of Him. For were He to be really one of these essentially, He could no longer be termed another. For were He properly called a lamb, He could no longer be called a lion. If He were properly called a lion, He would not be signified by a serpent. But we say all these things of Him in figure, with the greater latitude, the further removed they are from His essence. The wild ass can therefore designate the Incarnate Lord. For the wild ass is an animal of the fields. And because the Incarnate Lord profited the Gentiles more than the Jews, when, assuming a living body [‘corpus animale’], He went, as it were, not into the house, but rather into the field. Of which field of the Gentiles it is said by the Psalmist; The beauty of the field is with Me. [Ps. 50, 11] The Incarnate Lord therefore, Who in the form of God is equal to the Father, is in the form of a servant less than the Father, in which He is also less than Himself. Let it be said therefore by the Father of the Son in the form of a servant; Who hath sent out the wild ass free, and who hath loosed his bands? For every one who sins is the servant of sin. And because the Incarnate Lord was made partaker of our nature, not of our sin, He is said to have been sent forth free, because He is not held under the dominion of sin. Of Whom it is written elsewhere; Free among the dead. [Ps. 88, 5] He is said to have been sent forth free, because taking our nature, He is not at all held by the yoke of iniquity. And though the stain of our guilt touched Him not, yet the suffering of our mortality bound Him. Whence also after He is said to have been sent forth free, it is rightly added of Him; And who hath loosed His bands?
67. For His bands were then in truth loosened, when the infirmities of His Passion were changed into the glory of His Resurrection. For the Lord had those infirmities of our mortal state, which we endure as the desert of our iniquity, as a kind of bands with which He wished of His own accord to be bound, even to death, and which He loosed marvellously by His Resurrection. For to be hungry, to thirst, to be weary, to be bound, to be scourged, and to be crucified, was the bond of our mortality. But when on the completion of His death the veil of the temple was rent, the rocks were cleft, the tombs were opened, the barriers of hell were laid bare, what else is shewn by so many arguments of such mighty power, but that those bands of our infirmity were loosened, that He, Who had come to take on Him the form of a servant, might return in freedom to heaven even with His members? Of which bonds of His the Apostle Peter witnesses, saying, Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of hell, because it was not possible for Him to be holden of it. [Acts 2, 24] And because after His Death and Resurrection He deigned to call the Gentiles to the grace of faith, after His bands are said to have been loosened.
