Whose harvest the hungry eats up, and takes it even out of the thorns, and the robber swallows up their wealth.
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Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
All who are given birth through the preaching of unbelief are “the children” of this foolish man. These “are far from safety,” for though they enjoy the temporal life without trouble, they are struck more severely with eternal vengeance. As the Lord says concerning these same sons of such a person, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel over land and sea to make one proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a child of hell as you are.” The text continues, “And they are crushed, neither shall there be any to deliver them.” Who else is to be understood by the name of “gate” but the Mediator between God and man, who says, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.” The sons, then, of this foolish man do not advance through the gate. - "Morals on the Book of Job 6.4"
11. For our old enemy is conquered as an unarmed man, when, by openly prompting evil things to the mind of man, he aims to destroy all the good together. But he comes ‘armed,’ when, leaving some good things untouched, he covertly works the ruin of others. For often he does not tempt some people in the understanding, nor oppose them in their meditation on Holy Writ, yet he undoes the life of those in practice, who, while they are praised for the excellence of knowledge, neglect to have regard to the shortcomings of their works, and while the mind is decoyed in the delightfulness of good esteem, no remedy is applied to the wounds of the life; and thus the ‘armed’ enemy has swallowed up this man, whom under the cloak of deceit, whilst leaving on one side, he has got the better of on another. It goes on,
And the thirsty shall drink [so. V.] his riches.
12. Often the foolish man has a fountain of inward liquid, but he does not drink thereof; in that he is vouchsafed parts to understa...
5. Now ‘the harvest’ of this foolish man was the crop of Sacred Writ. For the words of the Prophets are like so many grains of the ears, which the foolish man had, but did not eat. For the Jewish people indeed held the Law as far as the letter, but, from an infatuated pride, as to the sense thereof, they went hungering. But ‘the hungry eateth the harvest’ of this foolish one, in that the Gentile folk eats by taking in the words of the Law, in which the Jewish people toiled and laboured without taking them in. These hungry ones of faith the Lord foresaw, when He had said by the Evangelist, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. [Matt. 5, 6] Of these hungry ones Hannah saith prophesying, They that were full, have hired out themselves for bread, and they that were hungry were satisfied. [1 Sam. 2, 5] And as he lost the harvest, it is rightly added how the foolish man himself too perishes, where it is said, And himself shall the armed ...
