Job 38:10

"And I said unto him, Thou shalt come unto this place, not beyond. The demon was told how far he was to strike Job. Thus it has been said to the sea how far it can persecute the Church. "And in your bosom will be broken the fury of your waves:" in the midst of civil discords or in the tumult of battle.

He keeps [the sea] firmly within a sort of barrier, and in some perfect prescriptions of docility, as if he had given it precise commands. I have spoken, he says, and it did not reply, because that happens not only when no constraint forces it but also if the violence of an unchained power whips it quite hard. God has not allowed the sea to stand still and calm, in order that it may proclaim his power, because its nature fights against his commandments, and his commandment rules it everywhere. If water stood still, many people would have attributed its tranquility to the nature of the water; but since, in reality, it is restless and rises from inside, but without the strength to exceed its limits, its restlessness proclaims the power of God.

I surrounded it with My boundaries. ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION The Lord surrounds the sea with His boundaries, because He so restricts the wrath of persecutors by the dispensation of His judgments, that the swelling wave of their mad wrath is broken on the level shore of His secret dispensation. But if we ought to understand by the 'sea' in this place, not specially the crowd of persecutors, but the world in general; the Lord set up gates against the sea a second time, because He first gave to the human race the precepts of the law, and afterwards the testament of new grace; He a second time confined the violence of this sea by the gates He set against it, since those, whom He chose to obey His will, He first kept from idols, by giving the law, and afterwards delivered from the carnal understanding of things by the revelation of grace. The sea a second time received gates, because God first prohibited mankind from works of iniquity, but afterwards restrained them from the sin of thought. Let us see how God first imposed gates on the swelling sea. For behold it is said by the law, Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not commit adultery. Thou shall not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. [Ex. 20, 13-16; Deut 5, 17-20] Let us see how the Lord confines this sea with second gates. Behold He says in the Gospel, Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. [Matt. 5, 27. 28.] And it is said again, Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and do good to them that hate you. [ib. 43. 44.] He therefore Who first prohibits wickednesses of deeds, and afterwards does away with the faults of the heart, doubtless twice imposes gates on the swelling sea, that it pass not over the shores of justice which have been drawn around it. But when He was saying, Who hath shut up the sea with doors? He immediately also subjoined the time, When it was breaking forth, as if proceeding from the womb. Because, namely, he then opposed mankind by the precepts of the Law, when the world, though little removed from its first beginning, was going forth even from its very birth to make progress in the carnal life. For to proceed from the…