Bible Commentaries

Job 14:1 — of few days, and full of trouble. Man that is born of a woman, … — Or, that is borne about by a woman in her womb. Job’s design is here to set forth the misery of man (whom in the last verse of the former chapter he had compared, 1. To a rotten thing; 2. To a moth eaten garment), ab exordio ad exodium, from his conception to his dissolution. Man, earthly man, that is born of a woman, or mannesse, that weaker vessel, who both breedeth, beareth, and bringeth forth in sorrow a weak

Job 22:12 — thou; making Job’s atheistic speeches (here mimetically fathered upon him by Eliphaz) an argument of his great wickedness; as if Job should say, and so discover himself ("for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," Matthew 12:34 ) to be of Protagoras’s opinion, who doubted Deity, De Diis, utrum sint non ausim affirmare ( Prot.); or of Diagoras’s, who flatly denied it; or, at least, of Aristotle’s, who pent up God in heaven, and taught that he took little

Job 22:19 — for a laughing stock to all good men; the upright shall see it and be glad, and all iniquity shall stop her mouth, as self condemned, and therefore by the saints (swallowed up with a zeal of God’s glory) rightly derided, Psalms 52:9 ; Psalms 58:11 . And the innocent laugh them to scorn — Not out of ill will, or envy, or other corrupt affection; but, 1. For the glory of God, whose power, justice, and goodness is hereby evinced and evidenced. 2. For the good of others, who stumble at the

Job 24:1 — from the Almighty, do they that know him not see his days? Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty — Heb. Why are not times hidden from the Almighty? q.d. Who could think any otherwise, that had not been at the sanctuary, Psalms 73:17 , and there heard, Woe to the wicked! it shall go ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be (sooner or later) given unto him? Isaiah 3:11 . The Jewish doctors conclude, but falsely, from this text, that Job denied the Divine providence. And

Job 6:14 — shewed] from his friend; but he forsaketh the fear of the Almighty. To him that is afflicted — Heb. melted, viz. in the furnace of affliction, which melteth men’s hearts, and maketh them malleable, as fire doth the hardest metals, Psalms 22:15 Joshua 7:5 . Pity should be shewed from his friend — By a sweet tender melting frame of spirit, such as was that of the Church, Psalms 102:13 , and that of Paul, 2 Corinthians 11:29 , "Who is weak, and I am not weak?" sc. by way of

Job 8:8 — They scornfully look upon us as novelers, and ask where our religion was before Luther? We answer them, that our religion was always in the Bible, where their religion never was. This is the old commandment, saith St John, which was from the beginning, 1 John 2:7 . And prepare thyself to the search of their fathers — Or fit thyself, fix thy mind upon it, as Psalms 100:1 . We must not think to find truth but upon a serious search, Proverbs 2:3 . Anaxagoras complained omnia esse circumfusa tenebris,

Psalms 14:1 — that doeth good. The fool — That sapless fellow, that carcase of a man, that walking sepulchre of himself, in whom all religion and right reason is withered and wasted, dried up and decayed. Nabal, a fool or a churl; Nebalah, a carcase, Leviticus 11:40 . That apostate, in whom natural principles are extinct, and from whom God is departed; as when the prince is removing hangings are taken down. That mere animal, that hath no more than a reasonable soul, and for little other purpose than as salt,

Psalms 16:4 — sorrows shall be multiplied [that] hasten [after] another [god]: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips. Their sorrows shall be multiplied — Many sorrows shall be to those wicked idolaters, Psalms 32:10 , some of their own creating by their superstitions and will worships (vide Plutarch, περι δεισιδαιμονιας ); others from a jealous and just God; others

Psalms 6:6 — but forethink what sin will cost us we dare not but be innocent. Transit voluptas, manet dolor. Nocet empta dolore voluptas, Desire passes, grief remains. Desire hurts with empty grief. But today, saith a reverend writer (Bishop Pilkinton on Nehemiah 1:4 ), weep a man may not, for disfiguring his face; fasting is thought hypocrisy and shame; and when his paunch is full, then, as priests with their drunken nowls said matins, and belched out, Eructavit cor meum verbum, with good devotion as they thought;

Psalms 8:6 — Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all [things] under his feet: Thou madest him to have dominion, … — He had so at first, Genesis 1:26 , shall have again, Zechariah 8:12 Revelation 21:7 ; meanwhile (though Rebellis facta est creatura homnini, quia homo numini, the creature rebelleth against man, because man doth against God; yet) we cannot but see some footsteps remaining of that

Proverbs 10:1 — The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son [is] the heaviness of his mother. The Proverbs. — Properly so called. See Proverbs 1:1 . For the nine former chapters are a kind of common places, or continued discourses premised as a preface to these ensuing wise and grave sentences, tending much to the information of the mind and reformation of the manners, and containing things

Ecclesiastes 3:4 — dolore gaudet, is grieved for his sins, and then is glad of such a grief. "Those that so sow in tears shall reap in joy": whereas those that will not - in an evil time, especially when God "calls to weeping and mourning," Isaiah 22:12 and even thrusts men down, as it were, with a thump on the back - weep here, where there are weeping handkerchiefs in the hands of Christ, are like to have their eyes whipt out in hell, and to howl with devils. A time to mourn. — Matter enough

Song of Solomon 4:11 — thereby, saith Mr Foxe, Acts and Mon., 923. that they caused the whole sentence to be fair written in tables, and some in their books; the comfort whereof in several of them was never taken away from them to their dying day. The same author saith Ibid., 1559. of Bishop Ridley, martyr, that he usually preached every Sunday and holiday, to whose sermons the people resorted, swarming about him like bees, and coveting the sweet juice of his heavenly doctrine. How pleasant and profitable to Latimer was the

Song of Solomon 7:11 — beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field. — Being now fully assured of Christ’s love, she falls to praying. She makes five requests unto him in a breath as it were: (1.) That he would "come"; (2.) "Go forth with her into the field"; (3.) "Lodge with her in the villages"; (4.) "Get up early to the vineyards"; (5.) "See if the vine flourish, pomegranates bud," …

Isaiah 5:8 — prophet goeth on in the exposition of his parable, showing us some more of those wild or stinking grapes, with the sad effects thereof, to the end of the chapter. He beginneth with covetousness - that "root of all evil," as Paul calleth it, 1 Timothy 6:10 that metropolis of all wickedness, as Bion - and throweth a woe at it, as do also sundry other prophets. Covetous persons are of the dragon’s temper, who, they say, is so thirsty, that no water can quench his thirst. Covetousness

Isaiah 52:7 — "Hearken unto me, that God may hearken unto you." Our Saviour, that arch-evangelist, who, as some, is here first and chiefly meant by Mebassher, him that bringeth good tidings, "seeing the multitudes, went up into a mountain," Matthew 5:1 which is said to be in the tribe of Naphtali, and called Christ’s Mount to this day. His apostles afterwards travelled and trudged on foot over hills and dales - what a compass fetched Paul! Romans 15:19 Intervallum illud est milliariorum Germanicorum,

Amos 2:6 — a little money, which ever was and still is a common medler, and drives the bargain and business to an upshot. Money, saith one, is the world’s great monarch, and bears most mastery: whence it is that the Hebrew word, Adarcon, used for money, 1 Chronicles 29:7 Ezra 8:27 , comes of Adar, strong, or mighty, and Con, to prepare; to show that a moneyed man is a mighty man, as this world goes. Unless we may say of money, as one doth wittily of Sardanapalus, the last of the Assyrian monarchs: Sardanapalus,

Amos 5:4 — less concerned in it, and might well say, as one did in another case, “ Tu quibus ista legis, incertum est, lector ocellis, Ipse quidem siccis dicere non potui. ” All God’s threatenings (for the most part) are conditional, Jeremiah 18:7 ; Jeremiah 26:2 , sc. if men repent not. As if they do, they may live in his sight, and be accounted worthy (such is God’s great goodness) to escape all those things that shall befall the impenitent, Luke 21:36 . The gospel is post naufragium

Amos 9:13 — that in the kingdom of the Messiah ( In instauratione casulae Davidicae collapsae ) there shall be great abundance of all things, et plenum copiae cornu: or, if that should fail, yet plenty of all spiritual benedictions in heavenly things, Ephesians 1:3 , and contented godliness, 1 Timothy 6:6 , which hath an autarkeia, a self-sufficiency; so that having nothing, a man possesseth all things, 2 Corinthians 6:10 . This the prophet expresseth in the following words, by many excellent hyperboles, though

Micah 4:5 — this, many of them? As for the vulgar sort of them, they are headlong and headstrong, resolved to retain contra gentes against the people, the senseless superstitions transmitted unto them by their progenitors. But what saith the oracle, Revelation 14:7 ? "Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and" (whatever your ancestors did) "worship you him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters." And we will walk in the name