Job 22:3
What doth it profit God if thou be just? or what dost thou give him if thy way be unspotted?
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quid prodest Deo, si justus fueris ? aut quid ei confers, si immaculata fuerit via tua ?
- Septuagint (Swete)
- τί γὰρ μέλει τῷ κυρίῳ ἐὰν σὺ ἦσθα τοῖς ἔργοις ἄμεμπτος; ἢ ὠφελία ὅτι ἀπώσῃς τὴν ὁδόν σου;
- Hebrew (WLC)
- הַחֵ֣פֶץ לְ֭שַׁדַּי כִּ֣י תִצְדָּ֑ק וְאִם בֶּ֝֗צַע כִּֽי תַתֵּ֥ם דְּרָכֶֽיךָ
Haydock's commentary
Profit. God rules all with justice or with mercy: since, therefore, he punishes, it must be for some guilt, and not for his own advantage. But he might still chastise for the good of man, or to manifest his own power, John ix. 3. God also punishes the sinner for the wrong which he does to himself. (St. Augustine, Conf. iii. 8.) Any one may discover the sophism of Eliphaz. If God were indifferent with regard to our virtue, who would be able to advance one step towards him? (Calmet)
Man is unprofitable indeed to God, but he may reap great advantage from piety himself; and this is what God desires, as well as his own glory, Matthew v. 17. (Worthington)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Gregory the Great Book X, To Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria
For, as to what you have said about the fig-tree, Augustine speaks aptly in the same sense; for, when the evangelist subjoined, For the time of figs was not yet ( Mark xi. 13 ), it is plainly shown that the figs which the Lord had sought were fruit in the synagogue, which had the leaves of the Law, but not the fruit of works. For the Creator of all things could not be ignorant that the fig-tree had no fruit; which was a thing that all might know, since it was not the time of figs. But concerning what is written, That the day and hour neither the Son nor the angels know ( Mark xiii. 32 ), your Holiness has quite rightly perceived that this is most certainly to be referred, not to the said Son with respect to His being the Head, but with respect to His body, which we are. With regard to which matter, the same blessed Augustine in many places adopts this sense ( Quæst. lib. lxxxiii. q. …