If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me;
Ver. 13. If I did despise the cause of my many, errant, &c.] Servants of old (among the heathen especially) were mere slaves to their masters according to the flesh, who had power to use them at their pleasure, as they did their cattle. A servant (saith Aristotle) is the master's instrument, and wholly his ολων εκεινου. He might do what he would to them, saith Seneca, even to the taking away of their lives, without danger of law. But Job held with the same Seneca, that posse et nolle nobile est; and that in some cases, Nimis angusta innocentia est, ad legem bonum esse; that utmost right is utmost wrong; and that there will come a reckoning afterwards, the forethought whereof awed him, and swayed him to do his servants right, when he might have oppressed them and tyrannized over them; as now the Turks do over their galley slaves. Of Archbishop Cranmer it is recorded, that he never raged so far with any of his household servants as once to call the meanest of them varlet or knave in anger. Tremellius, who was for a time entertained in his house, saith of it, that it was schola vel palaestra pietatis et literarum, A school or nursery of piety and learning. And therefore what wonder that there was so good accord between him and his family, when there was so careful a performance of domestic duties, and he was not a better man than a master? Think the same of Job, discontents might occur in his house, and complaints might be made, which he heard with patience, and then set all to rights again, taking course that he might be both loved and feared by all about him.