When a few years have come, then I shall go the way where I shall not return.
All Commentaries on Job 16:22 Go To Job 16
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
Yet this voice may together with blessed Job suitably apply to each one of us as well; for every person who aims at human praises in what he does, seeks a “witness” on earth. But he that is eager to please almighty God by his deeds takes into account that he has a “witness in heaven.” It often happens that inconsiderate people find fault with even the very best things in us; but one who “has a witness in heaven” has no need to fear human reproofs. Hence it is further added, “My friends are full of words; my eye pours out tears to God.” For what is denoted by the eye but the intent of the heart? As it is written, “If your eye is good, your whole body shall be full of light.” For when anything is done with a good intention, the enacting of that intention gains no favor in the sight of God. And so when friends are full of words, that is, when the very same persons deny they are joined with us in faith, “the eye” must “pour out tears to God,” so that the whole bent of our heart may run out into the piercing of interior love and lift itself up to the things of the interior. Being forced back by external reproaches, it is driven to turn back within, lest it should vanish.… As if it were expressed in plain words, “As in all that I say, I am heard, so would that I heard all that is said concerning me.” But this can never be brought about in this life, because there is a great obstruction before the eyes of our heart, blocking from our sight the subtle nature of God, even our mere frailty by itself. But we shall then see him with clarity by whom we are now searchingly beheld. When this frailty is laid aside, we will receive that grace of inward contemplation of which Paul says, “For then shall I know, as also I am known.” Hence blessed Job, seeing that that knowledge can never be in the fullest way perfected here, groans indeed over the blindness of the present life, yet consoles himself by life’s brevity, saying, “For when a few years have come, I shall go the way from which I shall not return.” Everything that passes is short, even though it should seem slow in being finished, but in the way of death we “go and do not return by it,” not because we are not brought back by rising again to the life of the flesh but because we do not come again to the labors of this mortal life or to earn rewards by our labors.
