The Contrast of Lineages

He has brought the soul up higher than the world. There was a certain man in the land of Ausitis. He preaches him from his nature, and he preaches him from the land, so that just as having heard of him as a man, you marvel that he lived as one above a man, so if you learn also about the land from which so much fruit blossomed, you will truly marvel at what kind of rose has grown in the midst of thorns. Pay attention precisely.

The land, therefore, of the Ausitis, was the land of Esau; for the Ausitis was from Esau. And he names the land of the profane and evil Esau, as the Apostle says: 'Is there not a harlot or a profane man, like Esau?'—so that you may marvel from what educations of wickedness such a fruit of truth has blossomed. But not only did the land of Esau bring him forth, but also the root of Esau was himself; for he was a descendant of the slanderer. For the Scripture says that Job was the fifth from Abraham. And how fifth, listen: Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Esau, Esau begat Raguel, Raguel begat Zarrah, Zarrah begat Job. He therefore had the succession coming down from Abraham through Esau to him. Thus he shows the root, so that you may marvel at the fruit.

And who was Esau? A harlot and a profane man. And who was Job? The one from the harlot, this same venerable and marvelous man, the one now set before us for narration, the one saying: 'If my eye had followed a woman not mine own, would my wife be pleased with another man?' Esau had much mixture of women, being insatiable toward debauchery; but Job had the law of life in his manner, and he abstained so much that he did not seek out the beauty of strangers; and from fornication and adultery he abstained so much that he did not even attend to the women not yet betrothed, that is, the unremembered virgins; for it is necessary to use a more explicit expression. He abstained so much from attacking foreign marriages that even toward the unremembered virgin, for whom there was no danger, he did not incline his eye before...

Regarding unchastity. And who is witnessing these things? Job himself. He says, 'A covenant was distributed to my eyes, and I did not understand it in my youth.' See to what extent the things of piety reached him through discipline. He trains the eye toward piety, and he trains the limbs toward righteousness; and though bearing the succession from fornication, he shone out with the greatest self-control.

Esau was a brother-slayer in intention; for even if the deed did not come to pass, the intention is accused. For it is said that Esau said in his heart, 'Let the days of my father's mourning approach, and I will rise up against Jacob my brother.' The root, therefore, is brother-slaying; but he who blossomed from the root is the champion of righteousness. That one waged war by nature and regarded his brother as a stranger; but this one regarded strangers as brothers, saying, 'I became to the orphans as a father, and instead of a husband to their mother. A justice which I did not know, I searched out, and I stopped the unrighteous.' And he who carries the succession from Esau appropriates all foreign things, by setting foreign things as his own.

Esau reckoned in his mind to kill Jacob; but Job offered sacrifices for his sons, thinking, 'Lest they have sinned in thought.' Because that one had planned murder in thought, this great and brave athlete, fearing that these too might receive the venom of sin in thought, offered a sacrifice and one calf for sins. For Job said, 'Perhaps my sons have thought evil toward God?' Consider the precision to which the discipline of character reached him. And what does he do? Since Esau and Jacob, the ancestors, were at war with one another—not because Jacob agreed to evil, but because Esau began toward evil—he dissolves the disagreement of the ancestors by the table. He makes his sons feast with one another every day, so that the habitual table might dissolve the venom of evil.