EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (3)

Verse 7.—“As a heap.” Dealing with fluids as if they were solids, with an obvious allusion to Ex. xv. 8. “Depths,” masses of water. The main point of the description is God’s handling these vast liquid masses, as men handle solid substances of moderate dimensions, heaping the waves up, and storing them away, as men might do with stones or wheat.—J. A. Alexander.

Verse 7.—The vast mass of waters which had hitherto covered the entire surface of the globe, was on the third day of creation brought within narrower compass, and large tracts of the submerged earth reclaimed and rendered habitable ground.... The waters were, for the most part, congregated together in one vast body, instead of being universally diffused over the face of the earth. This is the state of things which we now contemplate; the various great seas and oceans constituting in fact but one body of water called in different regions by different names, as the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern, etc., oceans.—George Bush, on Gen. i. 9.

Verse 8.—“Let all the earth.” For who can doubt that God can do as he wills upon earth, since he so tamed the unconquerable nature of the sea?—Hugo Grotius, 1583-1645.

Verse 8.—“Let all the earth fear the Lord,” etc. Let them not fear another instead of him. Doth a wild beast rage? Fear God. Doth a serpent lie in wait? Fear God. Doth man hate thee? Fear God. Doth the devil fight against thee? Fear God. For the whole creation is under him whom thou art commanded to fear.—Augustine.

Verse 9.—“He spake and it was done.” As we say in Latin, Dictum factum, SAID DONE, no delay having interposed.—Hugo Grotius.

Verse 9.—“He spake, and it was done;” so that the creatures were not emanations from the divine nature, but effects of the divine will, the fruits of intelligence, and design, and counsel.—William Binnie, D.D.

Verse 10.—“The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought,” etc. The more the Pharisees of old, and their successors the prelates of late, opposed the truth, the more it prevailed. The Reformation in Germany was much furthered by the Papists’ opposition; yea, when two kings (amongst many others), wrote against Luther, namely Henry VIII. of England, and Ludovicus of Hungary, this kingly title being entered into the controversy (making men more curious to examine the matter), stirred up a general inclination towards Luther’s opinions.—Richard Younge’s Christian Library, 1655.

Verse 11.—“The counsel of the Lord.” Note the contrast between the counsel of the heathen in the last verse, and the counsel of the Lord in this.—C. H. S.

Verse 11.—“The thoughts.” The same word as devices in the preceding verse.—William de Burgh, D.D., in loc.

Verse 11.—The wheels in a watch or a clock move contrary one to another, some one way, some another, yet all serve the intent of the workman, to show the time, or to make the clock to strike. So in the world, the providence of God may seem to run cross to his promises; one man takes this way, another runs that way; good men go one way, wicked men another, yet all in conclusion accomplish the will, and centre in the purpose of God the great Creator of all things.—Richard Sibbes.

Verse 11 (last clause).—Think not, brethren, because he said, “The thoughts of his heart,” that God as it were sitteth down and thinketh what he should do, and taketh counsel to do anything, or not to do anything. To thee, O man, belongs such tardiness.—Augustine.

Verse 12.—“Blessed—whom he hath chosen.” A man may have his name set down in the chronicles, yet lost; wrought in durable marble, yet perish; set upon a monument equal to a Colossus, yet be ignominious; inscribed on the hospital gates, yet go to hell; written in the front of his own house, yet another come to possess it; all these are but writings in the dust, or upon the waters, where the characters perish so soon as they are made; they no more prove a man happy than the fool could prove Pontius Pilate because his name was written in the Creed. But the true comfort is this, when a man by assurance can conclude with his own soul that his name is written in those eternal leaves of heaven, in the book of God’s election, which shall never be wrapped up in the cloudy sheets of darkness, but remain legible to all eternity.—Thomas Adams.

Verse 12.—“The people whom he hath chosen.” Some read it, The people which hath chosen him for their inheritance. It cometh all to one. See Deut. xxvi. 17-19.—John Trapp.

Verse 12.—It is an happiness to have an interest in one greater than ourselves; an interest in a beggar is of no worth, because he is of no power; but interest in a prince all men seek, therefore it is said, “Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.”—Joseph Symonds.

Verse 12.—Lest it should be thought that men obtain so great a good by their own efforts and industry, David teaches us expressly that it proceeds from the fountain of God’s gracious, electing love that we are accounted the people of God.—John Calvin.

Verse 12.—I have sometimes compared the great men of the world, and the good men of the world to the consonants and vowels in the alphabet. The consonants are the most and the biggest letters; they take up most room, and carry the greatest bulk; but, believe it, the vowels though they are the fewest and least of all the letters, yet they are most useful; they give the greatest sound of all; there is no pronunciation without vowels. O beloved, though the great men of the world take up room, and make a show above others, yet they are but consonants, a company of mute and dumb consonants for the most part; the good men they are the vowels that are of the greatest use and most concernment at every turn: a good man to help with his prayers; a good man to advise with his counsels; a good man to interpose with his authority; this is the loss we lament, we have lost a good man; death has blotted out a vowel; and I fear me there will be much silence where he is lacking; silence in the bed, and silence in the house, and silence in the shop, and silence in the church, and silence in the parish; for he was everywhere a vowel, a good man in every respect.—John Kitchin, M.A., in a Funeral Sermon, 1660.

Verse 15.—“He fashioneth their hearts alike.” As an illustration of the passage as it stands in our version, we append the following:—“Every circumstance concurs in proving that mankind are not composed of species essentially different from each other; that, on the contrary, there was originally but one species, which, after multiplying and spreading over the whole surface of the earth, has undergone various changes from the influence of climate, food, mode of living, diseases, and mixture of dissimilar individuals; that at first these changes were not so conspicuous, and produced only individual varieties; that these varieties became afterwards more specific, because they were rendered more general, more strongly marked, and more permanent, by the continual action of the same causes; and that they are transmitted from generation to generation.”—G. L. Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, 1707-1788.

Verse 15.—The Creator of all things “fashioneth their hearts alike;” the word יַחַד, which signifies together at once, intimating that the hearts of all men though separated from one another by never so vast a gulf of time or place, are as exactly alike in respect of their original inclinations, as if they had been all moulded at the same time. The worship of a God and then some kind of religion, is necessary to us, we cannot shift it off.—William Pinke, 1631.

Verse 15 (last clause).—Two men give to the poor, one seeketh his reward in heaven, the other the praise of men. Thou in two seest one thing, God understandeth two. For he understandeth what is within, and knoweth what is within; their ends he seeth, their base intentions he seeth. “He understandeth all their works.”—Augustine.

Verse 16.—“There is no king saved by the multitude of an host.” At the battle of Arbela, the Persian hosts numbered between five hundred thousand and a million men, but they were utterly put to the rout by Alexander’s band of fifty thousand; and the once mighty Darius was soon vanquished. Napoleon led more than half-a-million of men into Russia—

But the terrible winter left the army a mere wreck, and their leader was soon a prisoner on the lone rock of St. Helena. All along the line of history this verse has been verified. The strongest battalions melt like snowflakes when God is against them.—C. H. S.

Verse 16.—“A mighty man;” or, a giant; Goliath for instance. As the most skilful swimmers are often drowned, so here.—John Trapp.

Verses 16, 17:—

Verses 16, 17.—The weakness and insufficiency of all human power, however great, as before of all human intellect.—J. J. Stewart Perowne.

Verses 16, 17.—As a passenger in a storm, that for shelter against the weather, steppeth out of the way, betaketh him to a fair spread oak, standeth under the boughs, with his back close to the body of it, and findeth good relief thereby for the space of some time; till at length cometh a sudden gust of wind, that teareth down a main arm of it, which falling upon the poor passenger, either maimeth or mischieveth him that resorted to it for succour. Thus falleth it out with not a few, meeting in the world with many troubles, and with manifold vexations, they step aside out of their own way, and too, too often out of God’s, to get under the wing of some great one, and gain, it may be, some aid and shelter thereby for a season; but after awhile, that great one himself coming down headlong, and falling from his former height of favour, or honour, they are also called in question, and to fall together with him, that might otherwise have stood long enough on their own legs, if they had not trusted to such an arm of flesh, such a broken staff that deceived them.—Thomas Gataker.

Verse 17.—“An horse.” If the strength of horses be of God, or be his gift (Job xxxix. 19), then trust not in the strength of horses: use the strength of horses, but do not trust the strength of horses. If you trust that strength which God hath given to horses, you make them your god. How often doth God forbid trusting in the strength of horses, as knowing that we are apt to trust in anything that is strong, though but a beast. “An horse is a vain thing for safety: neither shall he deliver any by his great strength.” As if God had said, you think a horse can save you, but know he is a vain thing. And when the Psalmist saith, “A horse is a vain thing,” he doth not mean it of a weak horse, but of a horse of the greatest strength imaginable; such a horse is a vain thing to save a man, neither can he deliver any by his strength; and therefore the Lord, when he promised great deliverances to his people, lest they should expect it by the strength of horses, saith (Hos. i. 7), “I will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen;” as if he had told them, do not look after creature strength to be saved by; a horse will be a vain thing to save you, and I can save you effectually without horses, and I will.—Joseph Caryl.

Verses 17-20.—Man is sensible of his want of earthly blessings, and will never cease, with excessive care, diligence, and vexation, to hunt after them, till he come to know that God will provide for him. When one hath great friends which they are known to lean upon, we say of them, such need take no care, they know such-and-such will see to them. On the contrary, come to one who knows no end of toiling and caring, ask him, Why will you thus tire yourself out? He will answer, I must needs do it, I have none but myself to trust to. So Christ followeth his disciples’ carefulness to this door, their unbelief, which did not let them consider our heavenly Father cared for them. No present estate, though never so great, can free the heart from distraction, because it is subject to decay and vanishing: we shall never cast the burden of care off our own shoulders, till we learn by faith to cast it upon the Lord, whose eye is over us for good. He will never renounce carnal supports who makes not God the stay of his soul for outward things. He will trust in the abundance of his riches, wisdom, friends, or strength, that makes not God his strength. The heart of man, being aware of his inability to sustain himself if he be not underset, will seek out some prop, true or false, sound or rotten, to lean unto. They will go down to Egypt for help, and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, who look not to the Holy One of Israel, and seek not the Lord.—John Ball.