Sores and pus were not enough. A new affliction is added. Job’s disease has destroyed his entire sensitivity to the extent that even his nourishment has become a torture for him. Indeed, Job says, the nauseating smell of gangrene has deprived him of the capability to distinguish sensations. Is there anything more painful than that torment? Neither sleep gave him rest nor food nourished him. “As the smell of a lion,” Job says. That wild beast, in fact, gives a horrible stench.
10. For he goes very far wrong, who imagines that the words of blessed Job were delivered with an eye to the historical fact alone. For what would the holy man, and one too borne up by the proclaim of His Maker, have said, that was great, or rather what that was true, if he had said that ‘unsavoury meat could not be eaten?’ or who had offered deadly food for him to eat, that he should subjoin, Or who can taste, what by being tasted brings death? And if we imagine that was said of his friends’ discourse, we are withheld from this view by the sentence that is subjoined, in which he says, The things that my soul refused to touch are for straitness become my meat. For never let it be thought that the holy man, when established in soundness of state, at any time looked down upon the words of his friends; who, as we learn afterwards by himself attesting it, was humble even to his servants, His words then are not void of mystica1 senses, which, as we gather from the end of the history, the internal Arbiter Himself commends. And these would never have gone on commanding such deep veneration even to the very ends of the world, if they had not been pregnant with mystical meaning.
11. Let blessed Job then, in that he is a member of holy Church, speak in her voice also, saying, The things which my soul refused to touch are for my straitness become my meat. For the Gentile world, after conversion, made eager by the fever of her love, hungers for the food of Holy Scripture, which being filled with pride it disdained for long. And yet these words agree with the voice of Judaea also, if they be a little more attentively made out. For from the training of the Law, and from the knowledge of the One God, she herself had salt, and looked down upon all the Gentiles as brute creatures. But because, when instructed by the precepts of the Law, she disdained to admit to herself the communion of the Gentiles, what did she but loath to take ‘unsavoury food?’ For the Divine decree had forbidden, on the menace of death, that the Israelitish people should join in a league with strangers, and pollute the way of life in holy religion. Whence too it is added, Or can anyone taste, what, by being tasted, brings death? But because this same Judaea, in the portion of the Elect, was converted to the faith of the Redeemer, the light which she had become acquainted with she laboured by the Holy Apostles to deliver to the faithless of her offspring. But the pride of the Hebrew people rejected the ministry of her preaching, whence she immediately turned aside her words of exhortation for the gathering together of the Gentiles, as it is said also by the same Apostles, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing that ye have put it from you, and have judged yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. [Acts 13, 46] Whence too in this place it is fitly subjoined, The things which my soul refused to touch are now for my straitness become my meat. For Judaea, having disdained the life of the Gentiles, refused as it were for long to touch her, whose society she scorned to admit; but on coming to the grace of the Redeemer, being rejected by the unbelieving Israelites, while by the Holy Apostles she stretches out herself for the gathering together of the Gentiles, she as it were takes that for food with a hungry appetite, which before with loathing she disdained as unworthy. For she underwent ‘straitness’ in her preaching, who saw that what she spoke was despised among the Hebrew people. But for her ‘straitness’ she ate the food which she had for long despised, in that being rejected by the obduracy of the Jews, she yearns to take to her the Gentile folk, whom she had contemned. Seeing then that we have delivered these points in a figurative sense, it remains that we go into them in their moral import.
18. For the soul of the righteous, going on in its progress, whereas before, when it cared for its own interests alone, it loathed to bear the burthens of another, and, too little sympathizing with others, could not stand against adversities, now that it constrains itself to bear with the weakness of its neighbour, acquires strength to overcome adversity, so that for the love of truth it seeks the hurts of the present life with so much the more courage afterwards, that before it fled from them in its weakness. For by its bending it is made erect, by its drawing towards another it is stretched out, by its fellow-feeling it is strengthened, and when it opens itself out in the love of our neighbour, it as it were gathers from reflection, with what resoluteness to lift itself up to its Maker. For charity, which lowers us according to the force of our sympathy, lifts us the higher upon the height of contemplation, and enlarged manifold it already burns with bigger desires, already beats high to attain to the life of the Spirit, even though through the torments of the body. What then aforetime he refused to touch, this same for straitness he afterwards eateth, who scarce containing his desires, now for love of his heavenly Country loves even the very pains, which for long he had feared. For if the mind is bent towards God with a strong purpose, whatever bitter betides it in this present life it accounts sweet, all that annoys it reckons rest, and it longs to pass even through death, that it may more completely possess itself of life. It desires to be utterly annihilated below, that it may more truly mount on high. But all this I may be falsely representing to be the case with the mind of a righteous man in general, and with the mind of blessed Job.
[AD 407] John Chrysostom on Job 6:7