JOB MEANS TO SAY THIS: there is no memory or trace left of my former prosperity. And that is even worse than my misfortune itself. “Oh, that one would indeed weigh the wrath that is upon me and take up my sorrow in a balance together!” And Job now tries to describe his sorrows. “I perceive my food to be loathsome [as the smell of a lion].” I wish to die, but I do not die. I suffer so because I am a man and not a stone; I am an ephemeral human being, I do not enjoy the aid from above. Among my nearest relations, some pass me by without seeing me; others trample me underfoot. No trace of my former prosperity remains.
32. For the frost congeals below, but the snow falls down from above. And often there are persons, who, while they fear temporal adversities, expose themselves to the severity of everlasting visitation. Concerning whom it is rightly declared by the Psalmist, There were they in great fear where no fear was. [Ps. 14, 5] For this man already longs to defend the truth with freedom, yet being affrighted in that very longing that he feels, he shrinks from the indignation of a human power, and while on earth he fears man in opposition to the truth, he undergoes from heaven the wrath of Truth. That man, conscious of his sins, is already desirous to bestow upon the needy the things which he is possessed of, yet dreads lest he himself come to need them so bestowed. When, being alarmed, he provides with reservation for his own use succours of the flesh for the future, he starves the soul from the sustenance of mercy, and when he fears want on earth, he cuts off from himself the eternal plenitude of the heavenly cheer. Therefore it is well said, Over those that fear the frost, the snow rushes down. In that all who apprehend from below what ought to be trodden under the feet, undergo from above what is deserving of apprehension, and when they will not pass by what they might have trodden beneath them, they meet with a judgment from heaven which they can in no sort sustain. Now by acting thus they attain the glory of the world in time, but what will they do in the hour of their call, when terror-stricken they quit at once all the things which they kept here with grievous apprehensions?
[AD 407] John Chrysostom on Job 6:16-18