The Body as a Bed of Suffering

However, since one cannot satisfy everyone, let him do this with understanding. This can be understood regarding the Savior: for he 'became poor through us' 2 Cor 8:9 and not for the sake of another. 'He became poor through us' so that he might free us from poverty and turn us away from want. He says, 'the one who did not know sin, for our sake made sin' 2 Cor 5:21—this is his poverty—'so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.' Fragmentary text It was asked... it was not sustained. Even if sin occurred, it was not so that sin might remain, but so that he might free the... 'You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich he became poor for us' 2 Cor 8:9. And the paradox is this: 'being rich' he is poor, and this poverty makes us rich, for it is a creative poverty. He is not poor at all, but in relation to his wealth.

2 In a day of evil the Lord will deliver him. He delivered Jesus 'in a day of evil' Matt 27:22-23, when those surrounding him were saying, 'Crucify, crucify him; we have no king but Caesar.' And it was also asked from that evil day, how he, having become sin, became a creator of righteousness. The name of understanding is taken for the sake of doing good to brothers in need; for the apostle says regarding an offering: 'Understand what I say; for God will give you understanding in all things' 1 Cor 12:8. And understanding is the knowledge of things joined together and things not joined together. Joined things are those that are similar, those that are equal, when we bring one thing to another and find that it has identity either by similarity or by equality. The one, therefore, having understanding, knows which things are joined to which and which are not.

3 The Lord will preserve him and let him live and make him blessed in the land. This can be said of both: the Lord preserves the poor and the needy. For this reason he also led the one understanding into himself. Where has it ever been said: when you see a suffering person and one who has arrived suddenly under another pretext, look there for a physician; see that the word of the divine providence has touched the physician, a compassionate physician, so that, sympathizing with the sufferer, he might help him medically. But he blesses the poor and needy man and makes him live in the land, or the one understanding and having received understanding upon...

The poor and the needy. If you speak concerning the Savior, you protect him and provide for him to live; for even though 'he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God' (Heb 13:3). Take 'in the earth' in a common sense.

And do not hand him over into the hands of his enemies. Such a person does not hand over 'into the hands of his enemies.' Such a person has many enemies, many who are attacking him; for he is a blessed man and has understanding toward the poor and the needy according to all the clarifications provided, and he has many enemies attacking him; for God will rescue him from their hands. But he who is given over to them is not rescued from the hand of those persecuting him.

The Lord will help him upon his bed of pain. Here, concerning the poor, he says: even if he should be upon a bed of sickness and such a thing should be painful to him, God helps him. Have the things said in the Gospels concerning the paralytics: one remained in a bed of pain for thirty-eight years, thrown down on a bed so as not to be able to be shaken or to rise up (John 5:5). And others like these were recorded in the Gospels as paralytics. But not everyone upon a bed of pain and sickness is rescued. For instance, one fell from the bed from on high and died.

But if toward a restoration, the body is often called the bed of the soul. And there are many scriptures gathered together for such a theory. When someone is in the corruptible body and dwells in the earth, he 'reaps a much-wise mind' (Job 4:7), he is 'upon a bed of pain'; but when God helps him, he makes him to lift up the body and to carry it away, and he is no longer thrown down upon the body, but he himself afterwards lifts up the bed and walks. The body, therefore, is a bed.

The lover of pleasure, the lover of passion, the one accepting and doing the things of the body, suffers upon a bed, but God helps him and makes him healthy, so that, having become healthy, he may no longer be thrown down upon the bed himself, but he himself may carry it, and as they say, so that the soul may begin of the body. What then are those sixty powerful ones, who are received in blessing, who are around the bed? From Abraham to nineteen and from... these, therefore, are the sixty powerful ones concerning the body of...