Cassiodorus

“For mildness will come upon us, and we shall be corrected. Who knows the power of your anger, or can number your wrath for fear?” He now elaborates on his earlier statement: “the greatest number of them are labor and sorrow.” He says that we must not go beyond the precepts of the law, for Jesus Christ, who is mildness perfected, comes upon us and corrects and improves us if we wantonly ignore his Testaments. Since he used the word corrected, he prefaced it with “mildness,” so that we may realize that all the changes wrought by God in the faithful result from the application of devoted love. Next comes “Who knows the power of your anger or can number your wrath for fear?” Moses, who had experienced the severity of the Lord’s response to his errant people when they roused him with incessant grumbling, rightly exclaims that no one’s reckoning can measure his vengeance and that the potentialities of angry action open to him cannot be numbered. Observe in both instances that his boundless power is proclaimed, for just as the Lord’s rewards cannot be understood in their fullness, likewise the measure of his vengeance cannot be grasped. He did well to add “for fear;” as another prophet remarks: “I have pondered your works and was afraid.”