That you turn your spirit against God, and let such words go out of your mouth?
All Commentaries on Job 15:13 Go To Job 15
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
It is as if Eliphaz said to Job in plain words, “If you would amend your profession of faith, you might long ago have possessed consolation in your scourges.” “Why does your heart puff you up? Have your eyes astonished you as though you were thinking of great things?” Often the mind of the righteous is so suspended in contemplating things on high that outwardly their face seems to have been struck with astonishment. Because heretics are not taught to enforce the power of contemplation in secret, they think that when the just and those that are imbued with right understanding do so, it is more out of hypocrisy than truth. They believe that whatever they themselves cannot obtain possession of must not exist in others in any genuine way either. “Why does your spirit swell against God, that you let such words go out of your mouth?” Very often when the righteous are afflicted with any woes, they are forced to confess their works, as blessed Job had done, who after living righteously was beaten down by the stokes of the rod; but when the unrighteous hear the sayings of the righteous, they think that they are uttered in self-exaltation rather than in truth. For they weigh the words of the righteous by their own feelings and do not think that good words can be said in a humble spirit. For as it is a great sin for a person to ascribe to himself what is not there, so it is commonly no sin at all if he speaks the good that there is with humility. Hence it often happens that the just and unjust speak words that are similar, but always a heart that is widely dissimilar. By the same sayings for which the Lord is offended by the unrighteous, he is even propitiated by the righteous. Thus the Pharisee, when he entered the temple, said, “I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess.” But the publican went out justified more than he. Hezekiah too, the king, when he was afflicted with sickness of the body and brought to the last point of life, said with his heart pierced in prayer, “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech you, how I have walked before you in truth, and with a perfect heart.” Nor yet did the Lord disregard this confession of his perfection, or refuse him, whom he immediately heard effectually in his prayers. See, the Pharisee justified himself in act, and Hezekiah maintained himself to be just in thought as well, and by the same act the one offended and the other propitiated God. Does not almighty God estimate the words of each by the thoughts within, and in his ear are not those high that are uttered with a lowly heart? Hence blessed Job, when he put forward his deeds, did not in the least degree act proudly against God, in that those things that he had really done, he spoke with a humble spirit.
