Job 12:4

"But the righteous and holy man is mocked. This righteous man is our Lord, and here is the meaning: so it is not surprising if I too are mocked.

"Did I lose my common sense, by any chance," Job says, "because I fell into misery?" Here he presents himself as a righteous man, not by testifying to his perfect virtue but to the fact that he did not do anything wrong to anyone and that nobody can blame him. "And that my houses should be spoiled by transgressors," it was necessary that this happened, he says. It had been ordained from above. "However," he says, "do not believe that these misfortunes will stop for me. Indeed, if I, who have committed no act of injustice, suffer so, the wicked will suffer even more so."

He that is mocked of his neighbour as I am, calleth upon God, and He answereth him. Oftentimes the frail mind, when it is welcomed by the breath of human regard on the score of good actions, runs out into outward delights, so that it lays aside what it inwardly desires, and willingly lies all loosely in that which it gives ear to without. So that it does not so much delight to become as to be called blessed; and whereas it gapes after the words of applause, it gives over what it had begun to be; and so it is severed from God by the same means by which it appeared to be commendable in God. But sometimes it presses forward in good practice with a constant heart, and yet is pushed hard by the scoffs of men; it does admirable deeds, and gets only abuse; and he that might have been made to go forth without by commendations, being repulsed by insults, returns back again into himself; and stablishes himself the more firmly in God, that he findeth no place without when he may rest in peace: for all his hope is fixed in his Creator. And amidst scoffs and revilings, the interior Witness is alone implored. And his soul in his distress becomes God's neighbour, in proportion as he is a stranger to the favour of man's esteem. He forthwith pours himself out in prayer, and being pressed without, he is refined with a more perfect purity to penetrate into all within. Therefore it is well said at this time, He that is mocked of his neighbour as I am, will call upon God, and He will hear him. For whilst the wicked reproach the soul of the good, they are shewing them Whom to seek as the Witness of their actions. And while their soul in compunction braces itself in prayer, it is united within itself to the hearing of the Most High, by the same act whereby it is severed from the applause of man without itself. But we ought to note how thoughtfully the words are inserted, as I am. For there be some men whom both the scoffings of their fellow-creatures sink to the ground, and yet they are not such as to be heard by the ears of God. For when mocking issues against sin, surely no virtuous merit is begotten in that mocking. For the priests of Baal, when they called upon him with clamorous voices, were mocked by Elijah, when he said, Cry aloud; for he is a god either he is talking, or he is staying on a journey. But this mocking was conducive to the service of virtue, in that it came…