Lo, their prosperity is not in their hand: the counsel of the wicked is far from me.
All Commentaries on Job 21:16 Go To Job 21
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
For it very often happens that people make it more their aim to serve their fellow creatures, whom they see with bodily sight, than to serve God, whom they do not see. For in all that they do, their eyes reach out only for what they can see. But they cannot stretch the eyes of the body to God. They become scornful of paying god homage. They grow weary. For, as has been said, they do not serve him whom they do not behold with bodily sight. If they would but seek God, the author of all things, in a spirit of humility, they would in themselves experience that something not seen is preferred to an object that is seen. For they themselves exist by virtue of an invisible soul and a visible body. But if that which is not seen is withdrawn from them, what is seen at once perishes. The eyes of the body indeed are open, but they cannot see or perceive anything, for the sense of sight is gone, because the indweller has quit, and the house of the flesh remains empty, since that invisible spirit has departed which was wont to look through its windows.…
Rather, to us, the eternal world ought to be viewed in both thought and intent, yet in the way the world of time views it, one is “given” and the other “added” over and above in superabundance. And yet it very often happens that when people pray for temporal good things but do not look for eternal rewards, they seek the thing that is added and do not want that to which it should be added. They do not count it to be worthy of their prayer, if here they are poor in temporal things, and there live for everlasting wealth in blessedness. Having their eyes fixed on visible things alone, as has been said, they refuse to purchase for themselves the invisible by the labor of asking God for it. If they only sought first that which is above, they would fill their labor already with fruit. When the mind employed in prayers pants after the form and fashion of its Maker, burning with divine longings, it is united to that which is above and liberated from that below. It opens itself in the affection of its fervent passion that it may take in [that which is above], and, while taking in, kindles itself. Merely to love things above is already to mount on high, and while with longing desire, the soul is already participating in heavenly things. In a marvelous way it tastes the very thing it longs to get. It goes on, “But because their good things are not in their hand, may their counsel be far from me.” He “holds his good things in his hand” who in despising temporal things overcomes them under the dominion of the mind. For whoever loves them overly much subjects himself all the more to them than them to himself. For many of the righteous were rich in this world. Sustained by their substance and by their honor, they seemed to possess many things. Yet, because their mind was not possessed by the excessive enjoyment of these things that were theirs, “their good things were [seemingly possessed] in their own hands,” because they were held subordinate to the authority of the soul. But on the other hand the wicked so discharge themselves with all their hearts in aiming toward outward things that they do not themselves hold the things possessed but are held with minds in bondage by the things they possess.
Therefore, because “their good things are not in their hand,” it is rightly added, “let their counsel be far from me.” For what is “the counsel of the wicked” except to seek earthly things and neglect eternal glory, to aim at temporal wellbeing at the cost of interior detriment and to exchange transitory sorrows for eternal woes?
