EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (3)

Verse 4.—“His eyes behold,” etc. Take God into thy counsel. Heaven overlooks hell. God at any time can tell thee what plots are hatching there against thee.—William Gurnall.

Verse 4.—“His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.” When an offender, or one accused for any offence, is brought before a judge, and stands at the bar to be arraigned, the judge looks upon him, eyes him, sets his eye upon him, and he bids the offender look up in his face; “Look upon me,” saith the judge, “and speak up:” guiltiness usually clouds the forehead and clothes the brow; the weight of guilt holds down the head! the evil doer hath an ill look, or dares not look up; how glad is he if the judge looks off him. We have such an expression here, speaking of the Lord, the great Judge of heaven and earth: “His eyelids try the children of men,” as a judge tries a guilty person with his eye and reads the characters of his wickedness printed in his face. Hence we have a common speech in our language, such a one looks suspiciously, or, he hath a guilty look. At that great gaol-delivery described in Rev. vi. 16, All the prisoners cry out to be hid from the face of him that sat upon the throne. They could not look upon Christ, and they could not endure Christ should look on them; the eyelids of Christ try the children of men.... Wickedness cannot endure to be under the observation of any eye, much less of the eye of justice. Hence the actors of it say, “Who seeth us?” It is very hard not to show the guilt of the heart in the face, and it is as hard to have it seen there.—Joseph Caryl.

Verse 5.—“The Lord trieth the righteous.” Except our sins, there is not such plenty of anything in all the world as there is of troubles which come from sin, as one heavy messenger came to Job after another. Since we are not in paradise, but in the wilderness, we must look for one trouble after another. As a bear came to David after a lion, and a giant after a bear, and a king after a giant, and Philistines after a king, so, when believers have fought with poverty, they shall fight with envy; when they have fought with envy, they shall fight with infamy; when they have fought with infamy, they shall fight with sickness; they shall be like a labourer who is never out of work.—Henry Smith.

Verse 5.—“The Lord trieth the righteous.”—Times of affliction and persecution will distinguish the precious from the vile, it will difference the counterfeit professor from the true. Persecution is a Christian’s touchstone, it is a lapis lydius that will try what metal men are made of, whether they be silver or tin, gold or dross, wheat or chaff, shadow or substance, carnal or spiritual, sincere or hypocritical. Nothing speaks out more soundness and uprightness than a pursuing after holiness, even then when holiness is most afflicted, pursued, and persecuted in the world: to stand fast in fiery trials argues much integrity within.—Thomas Brooks.

Verse 5.—Note the singular opposition of the two sentences. God hates the wicked, and therefore in contrast he loves the righteous; but it is here said that he tries them: therefore it follows that to try and to love are with God the same thing.—C. H. S.

Verse 6.—“Upon the wicked he shall rain snares.” Snares to hold them; then if they be not delivered, follow fire and brimstone, and they cannot escape. This is the case of a sinner if he repent not; if God pardon not, he is in the snare of Satan’s temptation, he is in the snare of divine vengeance; let him therefore cry aloud for his deliverance, that he may have his feet in a large room. The wicked lay snares for the righteous, but God either preventeth them that their souls ever escape them, or else he subventeth them: “The snares are broken, and we are delivered.” No snares hold us so fast as those of our own sins; they keep down our heads, and stoop us that we cannot look up: a very little ease they are to him that hath not a seared conscience.—Samuel Page, 1646.

Verse 6.—“He shall rain snares.” As in hunting with the lasso, the huntsman casts a snare from above upon his prey to entangle its head or feet, so shall the Lord from above with many twistings of the line of terror, surround, bind, and take captive the haters of his law.—C. H. S.

Verse 6.—“He shall rain snares,” etc. He shall rain upon them when they least think of it even in the midst of their jollity, as rain falls on a fair day. Or, he shall rain down the vengeance when he sees good, for it rains not always. Though he defers it, yet will it rain.—William Nicholson, Bishop of Gloucester, in “David’s Harp Strung and Tuned,” 1662.

Verse 6.—“Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest.” The strange dispensation of affairs in this world is an argument which doth convincingly prove that there shall be such a day wherein all the involucra and entanglements of providence shall be clearly unfolded. Then shall the riddle be dissolved, why God hath given this and that profane wretch so much wealth, and so much power to do mischief: is it not that they might be destroyed for ever? Then shall they be called to a strict account for all that plenty and prosperity for which they are now envied; and the more they have abused, the more dreadful will their condemnation be. Then it will be seen that God gave them not as mercies, but as “snares.” It is said that God “will rain on the wicked snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest:” when he scatters abroad the desirable things of this world, riches, honours, pleasures, etc., then he rains “snares” upon them; and when he shall call them to an account for these things, then he will rain upon them “fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest” of his wrath and fury. Dives, who caroused on earth, yet, in hell could not obtain so much as one poor drop of water to cool his scorched and flaming tongue: had not his excess and intemperance been so great in his life, his fiery thirst had not been so tormenting after death; and therefore, in that sad item that Abraham gives him (Luke xvi. 25), he bids him “remember, that thou, in thy lifetime, receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” I look upon this as a most bitter and a most deserved sarcasm; upbraiding him for his gross folly, in making the trifles of this life his good things. Thou hast received thy good things, but now thou art tormented. Oh, never call Dives’s purple and delicious fare good things, if they thus end in torments! Was it good for him to be wrapped in purple who is now wrapped in flames? Was it good for him to fare deliciously who was only thereby fatted up against the day of slaughter?—Ezekiel Hopkins.

Verse 6.—“Snares, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.” After the judgment follows the condemnation: pre-figured as we have seen, by the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. “Snares:” because the allurements of Satan in this life will be their worst punishments in the next; the fire of anger, the brimstone of impurity, the tempest of pride, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. “This shall be their portion;” compare it with the Psalmist’s own saying, “The Lord himself is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.” Psalm xvi. 5.—Cassiodorus, in J. M. Neale’s Commentary.

Verse 6.—“The portion of their cup.” Heb., the allotment of their cup. The expression has reference to the custom of distributing to each guest his mess of meat.—William French and George Skinner, 1842.

Verse 7.—That God may give grace without glory is intelligible; but to admit a man to communion with him in glory without grace, is not intelligible. It is not agreeable to God’s holiness to make any inhabitant of heaven, and converse freely with him in a way of intimate love, without such a qualification of grace: “The righteous Lord loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright;” he looks upon him with a smiling eye, and therefore he cannot favourably look upon an unrighteous person; so that this necessity is not founded only in the command of God that we should be renewed, but in the very nature of the thing, because God, in regard of his holiness, cannot converse with an impure creature. God must change his nature, or the sinner’s nature must be changed. There can be no friendly communion between two of different natures without the change of one of them into the likeness of the other. Wolves and sheep, darkness and light, can never agree. God cannot love a sinner as a sinner, because he hates impurity by a necessity of nature as well as a choice of will. It is as impossible for him to love it as to cease to be holy.—Stephen Charnock.