^10:14 If I have sinned and for a time you have spared me, why do you not allow me to be clean from my iniquity?
^10:15 And if I have been impious, woe is me! and if just, I will not lift up my head, filled with affliction and misery.
^10:16 And because of pride you will seize me like a lioness, and returning you torment me wondrously.
^10:17 You renew your witnesses against me and multiply your wrath, and punishments wage war against me.

182. If I have sinned and for a time you have spared me, etc. Above Job inquired into the cause of his punishment on the supposition that he was innocent; but now he proceeds to inquire whether he is punished because he is a sinner. And first he shows that he is not punished for sin, using such a reason: for if he committed sin, he seems especially to have committed it in the time of prosperity; but if sin is the whole cause why some endure adversities in the present, and when the cause is posited the effect is posited, it would be necessary that adversity follow immediately when someone sins. But it was manifest that Job had preserved the same manner of living in the time of his prosperity; hence, if he sinned by living in this way, he had sinned long before he suffered adversity. Therefore it would be necessary to say that, since adversity did not follow immediately after sin, God spared him for that time in which he did not bring in adversities; but it is unfitting to say that God imputes again for punishment a sin that he has spared. Therefore it does not seem that he is now punished for a sin previously committed by him. This, then, is what he says: If I have sinned, namely, in the time of my prosperity, and for a time you have spared me, because, namely, you did not immediately bring in adversity, why do you not allow me to be clean from my iniquity? As if to say: why, since for some time you regarded me as, so to speak, pure by sparing me my iniquity, do you now again punish me as though I were not pure?

183. He consequently adds another reason, which is such: if sin is the whole cause of present adversities, it would follow that the just would not suffer adversities in this world as sinners do; but we see that adversities are common to both the just and sinners, and this is what he says: And if I have been impious, woe is me! That is, I endure adversities; and if just, either I was before or have now become so, I will not on this account lift up my head, as though raised up from misery: I say this as one existing filled with affliction, with regard to pains, and misery, with regard to want and confusion. Now by fullness he designates an abundance of affliction and misery, and he seems to say this against the saying of Eliphaz and Bildad, who had said that if he were converted he would be freed from adversity; against this he says that even if he has been made just, nevertheless he is not on this account relieved from misery, although for previous sins, if there were any, he has already been sufficiently punished, which he designates by fullness of affliction and misery.

184. And because Eliphaz had imputed this to him as pride, that he called himself innocent, he adds: And because of pride you will seize me like a lioness: for Eliphaz had said above, in disparagement of Job: The roaring of the lion and the voice of the lioness and the teeth of the young lions have been broken. Therefore he says: because of pride you will seize me like a lioness, as if to say: you make me be regarded by those who seize upon my words as a lioness because of pride. And the very fact that he was thus regarded as evil was a punishment for him beyond punishment, whence he adds: and returning, you torment me wondrously, as though you first came afflicting me through the removal of my possessions and the wounds of my body, and now you have returned a second time and torment me through my friends, which is wondrous because from friends I ought rather to receive consolation; or he says this because a man is especially afflicted when he is mocked by friends. What kind of torment this is he shows by adding: You renew your witnesses against me: for Eliphaz, while he seemed to defend the justice of God, and likewise his companions, in which they were showing themselves, as it were, witnesses of God, were speaking against Job, accusing him of sin; and thus you multiply your wrath, that is, the effect of wrath, while you punish me in many ways, and punishments wage war against me, as though they attack me with a certain authority and without contradiction: for soldiers are accustomed, with royal authority and without any contradiction, to attack someone who is regarded as guilty.