They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them.
Read Chapter 21
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
What wonder then if those persons for a moment run a course unlike in the prosperity and adversity of this world, who through the corruption of the flesh return alike to the earth? So that life alone is to be thought on, wherein together with the resurrection of the flesh there is the arrival at an unlike end of recompensing. For what is ‘strength and ease’ to the wicked, what ‘marrow and riches,’ seeing that all is left here in a moment, and There that retribution, which may never be left, is found? For as the mirth of this wicked one passes on to woe, so the woe of the innocent soul in affliction passes on to joy. So neither ought riches to lift up the soul, nor poverty to disturb it. Hence blessed Job in the midst of hurts in substance receives to the mind no hurts in thoughts; but to them that despise him under the infliction of the rod, he adds rebuking them.
In order to refute the argument of [his friends], who wanted to refer everything to [their concept] of divine equity, he shows how they are inferior to him in merits and successes, so that it may clearly appear that in the present state of things the form of justice that they think they understand is lame. - "Exposition on the Book of Job 21.23–25"
