The light shall be dark in his tent, and his lamp shall be put out with him.
All Commentaries on Job 18:6 Go To Job 18
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
For every ungodly person has “a flame of his own fire” that he kindles in his heart from the heat of temporal desires, while he burns now with these, now with those lusts and fans his thoughts into a bigger flame by the diverse flatteries of the world. But if a fire has no flame, it does not shine by shedding any light. And so the flame of the fire is his outward beauty or power that comes from his burning within. What he anxiously desires to get, he very often wins, to the heaping up of his own ruin; and whether in the power of the loftiest pitch or in the wealth of multiplied increase, he, as it were, shines in external glory. But “the flame of his fire shall not shine,” in that in the day of his departure, all the fair outward show is removed, and he is consumed by his own burning within. And “so the flame” is removed from “the fire” when his exterior glory is separated from his interior burning.… Now it is well that it is not said of this lamp, “which is by him” but “which is above him,” in that earthly enjoyments possess the mind of the bad and so swallow it up in delight, that they are “above” it and not “by it.” But the righteous, even when they have the good fortune of the present life, are taught to force it to bow beneath them. That is, when they are made glad in themselves with good things, they may get above it by the counsel of a steadied mind and surmount it by the control of virtue. And so “the lamp” of the wicked person, “which is above him, is put out,” in that his joy is quickly brought to an end, a joy that possessed him wholly in this life; and the person who now wickedly lets himself out at large in pleasures is punished hereafter being closely encompassed round about in woe.
