Job — Chapter 17

Spiritus meus attenuabitur dies mei

On the approaching death of Job: "My spirit is wasted, my days are shortened; only the grave remains for me" (v. 1). Corderius explicates "spiritus meus attenuabitur" as either the attenuation of vital spirits (causing weakness and difficulty breathing — asthma or dyspnoea) or more broadly the approach of the soul to departure. He traces the connection between suppressed breathing and shortened days: the body is failing on multiple fronts. On v. 3: "Lay down a pledge for me with thee; who is there that will strike hands with me?" — this is a legal metaphor: Job asks God himself to stand as guarantor in his case, to provide the surety that no human advocate can. Gregory (Moral. XIV.42): "Pledge thyself for me" means "be thou my mediator with thyself" — a profound reflexive formula that again adumbrates the Incarnation. On v. 9: "The righteous man holds fast to his way, and the one with clean hands increases strength" — Corderius takes this as Job's expression of confidence: the righteous, though afflicted, do not depart from their path but grow stronger.

Tenebit justus viam suam

On the just man's perseverance and Job's contemplation of death: "But the righteous holds to his way, and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger" (v. 9). Corderius treats this as an important axiom of spiritual theology: affliction strengthens rather than weakens the truly virtuous; each trial passed strengthens the soul for the next. He cites Gregory (Moral. XIV.49) and Bernard. On vv. 13-16: Job contemplates his imminent death with philosophic equanimity: "If I wait, Sheol is my house; I have made my bed in darkness; I have said to the pit: You are my father, and to the worm: My mother and my sister." Corderius reads "pit" and "worm" as the physical reality of death without, at this point, any consolation — the full nakedness of mortality confronted. Yet this is not despair: by naming death his father and the worm his sister, Job accepts kinship with death, domesticates it, refuses to be terrorized by it. Gregory: the holy man who has no fear of death has the greatest freedom; he cannot be controlled by the threat of annihilation.

Si sustinuero infernus domus mea

On Job's contemplation of Sheol as his final home: "If I wait, Sheol is my house; I have made my bed in darkness; I have said to the pit: 'You are my father,' and to the worm: 'My mother and my sister.'" Corderius explains the profound paradox: Job, the most righteous of men, adopts the language of the dead as his family. This is not despair but the extremity of identification with human mortality. On v. 15: "Where then is my hope? Who will see my hope?" — hope is the theological virtue that sustains the soul across the boundary of death; here Job's natural hope in temporal goods has been stripped bare, leaving only the naked theological hope in God himself. Gregory (Moral. XIV.53): this stripping of natural hope is the prerequisite for the flowering of pure theological hope. The final verse: "Will it go down to Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?" — Corderius reads as asking whether the hope born in suffering will persist beyond death; the implied answer, given the whole trajectory of the book, is yes.