Do you know it, because you were born then? or because the number of your days is great?
Read Chapter 38
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
35. As if He were openly saying, What wonder if thou understandest not thine end, since thou dost not comprehend thy beginning? And since thou knowest not with what beginning thou camest hither, what wonder, if thou canst not tell with what end thou art taken away? If therefore it was My work to bring thee forward from secresy to sight at thy beginning, it will be Mine also to bring thee back from sight to secresy. Why complainest thou aught of the dispensation of thy life, who, ignorant of thyself, art supported by the hand of thy Creator? Thou oughtest therefore to boast thyself the less in what thou dost, the more thou art confined within the bosom of eternity, and knowest not either in what order thou earnest hither, nor when, or how thou art taken hence.
36. But these words can yet be understood in another sense also; Didst thou know then that thou wast about to be born, and didst thou know the number of thy days? Thou understandest, As I, Who knew that I was about to be born, be...
“Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness?” He says what he had said before but more clearly, that is, that the course of human life is regulated by the alternation of times, so that at one time people dedicate themselves to work; in another time, the vigor of the body, which exhaustion had taken away, is returned to them.
“Did you know then that you would be born?” These words are not said without purpose but to demonstrate that God’s benevolence is the reason for everything. If you owe the fact that you exist to my benevolence, since you did not exist before, he says, how can you think that [benevolence] is denied to you, now that you live and are able to function? - "Exposition on the Book of Job 38.18–21"
