Job 10:21

"Before going to those places of torment from which one can not return. One can escape these. other penalties that have been discussed, if we come back to God. He therefore wants to rest before enduring the eternal tortures, that is to say, not to endure them. As if someone were to be corrected before being punished, obviously, if he corrects himself, he will not be punished.

In order to avoid scandalizing many who see his life end in affliction and sadness, it is not without reason that the righteous man asks for the termination of his ordeals. That is why [Job] said, "Before I go, never to return," evidently, to his human life, as if to say "In fact, if I return down here and receive here the reward of my toils, I will not be worn out and will not renounce the fight to the death in my ordeals. Those who are here, knowing my justice, will see that I receive my reward by coming back here. But if they see me die now in my ordeals, they will either think that Job is wicked or will believe that nothing useful comes from justice."

Before I go whence I shall not return, even to a land of darkness, and covered with the shadow of death. For what is denoted by 'the land of darkness' saving the dreary caverns of Tartarus, which are covered by the shadow of eternal death, in that it keeps all the damned for evermore severed from the light of life. Neither is the place below improperly called a land. For all they that have been made captive by it, are held fast and firm. As it is written; One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. Thus the dungeons of hell are rightly designated 'a land of darkness,' for all, whom they receive doomed to punishment, they torment with no transient infliction or phantasm of the imagination, but keep in the substantial vengeance of everlasting damnation. Yet they are sometimes denoted by the title of 'a lake,' as the Prophet bears witness, when he says, They have borne their shame with them that go down into the lake. Thus hell is both called 'a land,' because it holds stedfastly all that it takes in, and 'a lake,' because it swallows up those whom it has once received, ever tossing and quaking in weltering floods of torment; but the holy man, whether in his own voice or in the voice of mankind, beseeches that he may be 'let go' before he departs, not because he that bewails his sin is to 'go to the land of darkness,' but because everyone that neglects to bewail it doth assuredly go thither, according as the creditor says to his debtor, 'Pay thy debt, before thou art put in bonds for the debt;' whereas he is not put in bonds, if he delays not to pay all that he owes. In which place too it is rightly added, Whence I shall not return, in that His pity in sparing never any more sets them free, whom His justice in judging once assigns their doom in the places of punishment, which same places are yet more minutely described...