“And they remain as eternal sheep.” What is the meaning of these words? They are those words that Christ spoke, “My sheep hear my voice, and I give them eternal life.” The faithful are the eternal sheep; the heretics are imitators. They want to imitate the flock of Christ. They ordain their own bishops, presbyters, deacons, doctors, congregation and catechumens, and by imitating the eternal sheep they fulfill the prediction, “And they appear as eternal sheep.” They clearly are not eternal sheep but “appear as eternal sheep.”
“And their children play before them, taking up the psaltery and harp.” Our children take up the psaltery and the harp, praising and glorifying God. But “their [the heretics’] children,” who are foolish in themselves, also “play taking up the psaltery and the harp.” Every time they usurp the words of the Old Testament, they play and mock the oracles of the Law and the Prophets. By taking up the harmonies that were once the psaltery of the law and the prophetic harp, they play with them.
Certainly God does not cease from benefiting the wicked, in order to show that he has no hate against them, so that they may not say, “Since God hates us, he will never open the door of repentance to us.” And while he severely and sternly acts with the righteous, he nevertheless offers his love to the unrighteous. The rewards to be granted in time for [righteous] virtues are the future signs of the good works they do.
Since you believe to be wise and to know the reason why I suffer these afflictions, now answer my question. Why does it happen that very often many impious persons reach an old age in their wealth?… Their fields produce large crops, and they are delighted by their children and enjoy a constant abundance. They fear no one and receive no blow sent them by God. Their plowing cow does not give birth to an immature fetus, that is, it does not generate an imperfect or dead fetus, and their wives have no miscarriages. And they remain in prosperity like a flock, that is, free from care.
It is the usage of common talk to call ‘ox [bos]’ masculine, and ‘cow’ feminine, but literary phraseology designates ‘ox’ of the common gender. Hence it is now said, Their ox conceiveth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and loseth not her calf. For to the owner of flocks, the first good fortune is that the flocks being free from barrenness conceive, next that the conception come to the birth, and the third that the thing which is produced be by nourishment reared to a growth. And so in order to show that the wicked had them all together, blessed Job declares that ‘their flocks had conceived and not miscarried, that they had brought forth and were not deprived of their own offspring.’ But it is inferior good fortune, if whilst the flocks increase, the keepers of them do not thrive at the same time. And hence to the fruitfulness of the flocks we have the fruitfulness of their household [familiae] made to succeed immediately.
[AD 253] Origen of Alexandria on Job 21:7-14