For you write bitter things against me, and make me possess the iniquities of my youth.
All Commentaries on Job 13:26 Go To Job 13
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
For what is a human being but a leaf who fell in paradise from the tree? What but a leaf is he who is caught by the wind of temptation and lifted up by the gusts of his passions? For the human mind is agitated as it were by as many gusts as it undergoes temptations. Thus very often anger agitates it; when anger is gone, empty mirth follows. It is driven by the goading of lust. The fever of avarice causes the mind to stretch itself far and wide to compass the things that belong to the earth. Sometimes pride lifts it up, and sometimes excessive fear sinks it lower than the dust. Therefore, perceiving that he is lifted and carried by so many gusts of temptation, a human is compared well with a “leaf.” … For seeing that everything we speak passes away but what we write remains, God is said not to “speak” but to “write bitter things,” in that his scourges upon us last for long. For it was once said to man when he sinned, “Dust you are, and into dust you shall return.” And angels many times appearing gave commandments to people. Moses, the lawgiver, restrained sins by severe means. The only begotten Son of the most high Father himself came to redeem us. He swallowed up death by dying. He announced that everlasting life to us that he exhibited in himself. Yet that sentence that was given in paradise concerning the death of our flesh remains unaltered from the very beginning of the human race up to the end of the world.
