Job 29:16

"I meditated before judging what I did not know. We have left everything to follow you; what will there be for us (2)? He thinks he is happy to have been able to question someone about the coming judgment. 17 .. "I have broken the jaws of the wicked," that they may cease to devour the people that became their pasture.

I was a father of the poor, and the cause, which I knew not, I searched out. [HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION] For very often men give much to the poor, not because they love those poor, but because if they do not give, they dread the indignation of the Judge Above; which persons, if they were not afraid of God, would have had no mind to give the things they possess. And indeed in good deeds it is the first step of beginners, that he who does not yet know how to love his neighbour as himself, nevertheless should yet henceforth begin to dread the judgments from Above. Thus because it is one thing to do a good deed by command and another to do it from affection as well, that the holy man may teach us the inward spirit of his practice, let him say, I was a father to the poor. For not a patron, or a neighbour, or an helper to the poor, but 'a father' he testifies that he had been; in this way, because by the great attentiveness of his charity he converted the purpose of mercy into the affection of nature, that he should look on those as children by love, whom he was the head of as a father by protecting. Therefore because the force of his mercy had copied nature, he records himself to have been a father to the poor. Where he likewise adds; And the cause that I knew not, I most carefully searched out. In which words we have to consider all the particulars how distinctly they are related, and that no profit is passed over by him. Since he is just in his actions, pitiful in his neighbours' infirmities, active in the concerns of the poor. For he that takes thought of the blessings of the eternal recompensing, must needs extend himself to every occasion of the repayment to follow after. For hence it is said by Solomon; He that feareth God, neglecteth nothing. Hence also Paul saith; prepared unto every good work. But herein we ought to bear in mind that occasionally in our actions lesser good things are to be let pass for the usefulness of greater ones. Thus who could be ignorant that it has the merit of a good work to bury the dead: and yet Lo one, who had prayed to be let go in order to the burying of his father, it was said; Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. Thus the dutifulness of this service was to be made to give place to the office of preaching, because by the first he would be burying persons dead in the flesh in the earth,…