For destruction from God was a terror to me, and by reason of his majesty I could not endure.
All Commentaries on Job 31:23 Go To Job 31
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
“For I always feared God like waves swelling over me, and I could not endure the weight of him.” Consider here that blessed Job says these things concerning himself after having been pained and smitten. If he had been stricken in order to increase his moral excellences by one he so feared, one need not despise the one who disciplines. How shall the judgments of God weigh down for a time [those] who always dread these things in humility? How shall he be able to endure the weight of God, who condemns, if this same weight even he underwent under the rod who foresaw it in fear. Hence, with the utmost earnestness, we ought to dread that inquest of so great strictness. Now it is plain that in this life, when he smites, if amendment follows the stroke, it is the discipline of a father, not the wrath of a judge, the love of one correcting, not the strictness of one punishing. And so by that very present scourge itself, the eternal judgments ought to be weighed. And we ought with the greatest pains to reflect how that anger may be borne that casts away, if that anger of his that purifies may scarcely now be borne.
