Job — Chapter 19

Usquequo affligitis animam meam

On Job's third response to the friends — complaint about their cruelty: "How long will you afflict my soul, and crush me with words? These ten times you confound me: you are not ashamed that you oppress me." Corderius comments on the number ten: this is either literal (ten times they have spoken to him in this way) or a round number indicating the totality and frequency of their persecution by words. He quotes Ambrose (De Interp. Job II.3) powerfully: "They stoned the innocent man with the stones of their words. Job had lost all his possessions; his flesh suffered wounds; he remained that he might conquer the temptation of words. For nothing so penetrates the soul as a smooth speech, and again nothing so bites as harsh speech." On v. 6: "Know now that God has overthrown me, and has compassed me with his net" — Job insists that what he suffers is God's direct work, not merely a natural calamity or a punishment for known sins. This insistence on divine causation, paradoxically, is his strongest weapon: if God is the direct agent, then God himself can and must provide the vindication.

Semitam meam circumsepsit et transire

On the progressive stripping of Job — his isolation: "He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree." (vv. 8-10). Corderius sees in this passage the mystical theology of the "dark night of the soul" before its time. The progressive stripping of all external goods and relationships (vv. 13-15: brothers alienated, acquaintances strangers, relatives forgotten, guests and maidservants treating him as alien, even his wife repelled) represents the soul's reduction to absolute dependence on God alone. He cites Gregory (Moral. XV.46-48): God sometimes wills the complete exterior destitution of his greatest servants so that they may discover in their nakedness the pure gift of being. This is the mystical poverty which precedes the mystical marriage.

Miseremini mei miseremini mei saltem vos

On Job's appeal to the compassion of friends: "Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?" The doubled "have mercy" (miseremini mei, miseremini mei) is noted by Corderius as an emphatic reduplication unusual in the dialogues — a cry of naked need. He cites Ambrose (De Interp. Job II.4): "Wretched is the man who, destitute of human comfort, must cry aloud for mercy." Job has been abandoned by family (v. 13-15), servants (v. 16), wife (v. 17), and now begs even his tormentors for minimal compassion. On "the hand of God has touched me" — Job once more attributes his suffering to God directly: not to Satan, not to the Chaldeans or Sabeans, but to the divine hand. Corderius reads this persistent attribution not as blasphemy but as the deepest act of faith: by recognizing God as the ultimate agent, Job maintains his personal relationship with God even in extremity.

Quis mihi tribuat ut scribantur

On the famous passage on the Redeemer and resurrection: "Who will grant me that my words be written? Who will grant me that they be marked down in a book with an iron pen and lead plate, or else be graven with a chisel in flint? For I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I will see my God. Whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this my hope is laid up in my bosom." Corderius dedicates extensive commentary to these verses, treating them as the theological and spiritual summit of the entire book. On the four permanence-media (book, iron pen with lead, chisel in flint): Job wants his words to endure because they contain a truth of enduring importance — the certainty of resurrection and divine vindication. The Redeemer (Redemptor meus) is identified as God the avenger of blood (goel in Hebrew) but also proleptically as Christ the Redeemer, the one who will "stand upon the earth" (in novissimo die de terra surrecturus). Corderius cites Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, Gregory, Ambrose, and Tertullian on this verse as one of the clearest Old Testament testimonies to the resurrection of the flesh and to the future beatific vision: "in my flesh I will see my God" — not allegorically but bodily. He notes that the Vulgate's "I know" (scio) is a statement of certitude: this is faith, not mere opinion.

Scio enim quod Redemptor meus vivit

On the certainty of resurrection: Corderius returns to the crown of the entire commentary — the declaration of Job 19:25-27 — for a second, more developed treatment. He lists all the major patristic interpretations and defends the reading that refers to bodily resurrection and the beatific vision. Against those who interpret "in my flesh I will see God" as meaning "without my flesh" or merely "in this life" — Corderius argues with Jerome (In Ep. ad Paulinum) that the Vulgate reading is the most natural and the most theologically profound. He cites Tertullian (De Resurrectione Carnis, ch. 34): this is the clearest Old Testament text on the resurrection of the flesh. He cites Gregory (Moral. XIV.68-72): the vision of God "in my flesh" means that the body, reunited to the soul, will itself participate in the beatitude of the vision — not as an obstacle to divine vision but as its glorified instrument. This is essential to the Christian doctrine: the resurrection is not the escape of the soul from the body but the glorification of the entire person, body and soul together.