Job 9:17

These words mean two different things, either that Job had not sinned, even though he was, nevertheless, undergoing a punishment; or that Christ, as if he were guilty of sin, would have suffered resolutely the temptation of blameless passions.

"Lest I be broken in the storm," so I asked for his judgment lest he break me in the storm. "He multiplied on me the tribulations, without motive; I could not know the motive. This is the language of a man who admits that the chastisements of God have not changed him, and that he may be swallowed up by the storm, that is to say, struck with even more punishment. rigorous.

For He shall break me with a tempest. In every case that sinner is 'broken with a tempest,' who seemed to be stablished in tranquillity, in that the man whom the long-suffering Above bears with for long, the last strict Judgment destroys. And this is rightly called 'a tempest,' because it is manifested in a commotion of the elements, as the Psalmist witnesses, when he says, God shall come manifest, and He shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before Him, and a mighty tempest round about Him. And hence another Prophet also says, The Lord, His way is in the whirlwind and in the storm. In which same whirlwind the righteous man is never broken, for this reason, because here he is ever in fear and anxiety, lest he should be broken. For whilst still set in the journey of the present life, he bethinks himself how severe towards the actions of men the Requirer of works will appear, Who then condemns even without works some that are only bound with the guilt of original sin. Whence the holy man rightly adds thereupon in the voice of mankind, And multiplieth my wounds even without cause. For there be some that are withdrawn from the present light, before they attain to shew forth the good or evil deserts of an active life. And whereas the Sacraments of salvation do not free them from the sin of their birth, at the same time that here they never did aright by their own act; There they are brought to torment. And these have one wound, viz. to be born in corruption, and another, to die in the flesh. But forasmuch as after death there also follows, death eternal, by a secret and righteous judgment 'wounds are multiplied to them without cause.' For they even receive everlasting torments, who never sinned by their own will. And hence it is written, Even the infant of a single day is not pure in His sight upon earth. Hence 'Truth' says by His own lips, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Hence Paul says, We were by nature the children of wrath even as others. He then that adding nothing of his own is mined by the guilt of birth alone, how stands it with such an one at the last account, as far as the calculation of human sense goes, but that he is 'wounded without cause?' And yet in the strict account of God it is but just that the stock of mortality, like an unfruitful tree, should preserve in the branches that…