EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (4)

Verse 6.—Every carnal man walks in a vain shew, and yet how vain is he of his shew of vanity! He is “disquieted in vain,” and it is only vanity which disquiets him. He labours all his life for the profit of riches, and yet in death his riches will not profit him. He that views an ox grazing in a fat pasture, concludes that he is but preparing for the day of slaughter.—William Secker.

Verse 6.—“He heapeth up riches.” This is the great foolishness and disease, especially of old age, that the less way a man has to go, he makes the greater provision for it. When the hands are stiff, and fit for no other labour, they are fitted and composed for scraping together.—Robert Leighton.

Verse 6.—“He heapeth up riches.” The Hebrew word rendered, “He heapeth up,” signifies to rake together; in which there is an allusion to the husbandman’s collecting his corn together before he carries it to the barn. The metaphor is elegant, intimating the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of human acquisitions; which though heaped up together like corn, by one person, may soon become the possession of another.—Samuel Burder.

Verse 6.—

Verse 6.—The plentiful showers of tears which stand in our eyes when we come from the womb, and when we draw to the tomb, are faithful witnesses of man’s vanity. We bid the world “good morrow” with grief, and “good night” with a groan.—Edmund Layfielde.

Verse 7.—“Lord, what wait I for?”

Verse 7.—

Verse 7.—“My hope is in thee.” Sweet is it that our hope should rest in him who is never shaken; should abide in him who never changeth; should bind us to him who can hold us fast to himself, who alone is the full contentment of the soul; should, as it were, enter into him; since “in him is our being,” who is love.—E. B. Pusey, D.D., 1853.

Verse 8.—“Make me not the reproach of the foolish.” Let not their prosperity and my misery give them occasion to deride and reproach me for my serving of thee and trusting in thee to so little purpose.—Matthew Pool.

Verse 8.—“Make me not the reproach of the foolish.” Doubt not this; that of all the bitter agony which will be the portion of the lost soul at that, “Depart, ye cursed,” not the least will be the bitter reproaches and derision of those evil spirits who have seduced him to his ruin. “For this morsel of meat to have sold thy birthright! For the fleshly pleasures of a few days to have bartered thine eternal jewel! For a few grains of yellow earth to have missed the city with streets of gold, and gates of several pearls! O fool, beyond all folly! O madman, beyond all insanity! Truly we have need to pray with all earnestness, ‘Make me not the reproach of the foolish.’”—Origen, quoted by J. M. Neale.

Verse 9.—“I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.” See David’s carriage here; it was a patience not constrained, but from satisfaction of spirit: he saw love in his affliction, and that sweetened his soul.—Joseph Symonds.

Verse 9.—“I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.” God is training up his children here. This is the true character of his dealings with them. The education of his saints is the object he has in view. It is training for the kingdom; it is education for eternity.... It is the discipline of love. Every step of it is kindness. There is no wrath nor vengeance in any part of the process. The discipline of the school may be harsh and stern; but that of the family is love, We are sure of this; and the consolation which it affords is unutterable. Love will not wrong us. There will be no needless suffering. Were this but kept in mind there would be fewer hard thoughts of God amongst men, even when his strokes are most severe. I know not a better illustration of what the feelings of a saint should be, in the hour of bitterness, than the case of Richard Cameron’s father. The aged saint was in prison “for the Word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.” The bleeding head of his martyred son was brought to him by his unfeeling persecutors, and he was asked derisively if he knew it. “I know it, I know it,”—said the father, as he kissed the mangled forehead of his fair-haired son—“it is my son’s, my own dear son’s! It is the Lord! good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me or mine, but who hath made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.”—Horatius Bonar, in “The Night of Weeping,” 1847.

Verse 9.—“Because thou didst it.” This holy man had a breach made both at his body and spirit at this time; he was sick and sad; yet he remembers from whose hand the blow came. Thou, Lord, didst it; thou, whom I love dearly, and so can take it kindly; thou whom I have offended, and so take it patiently; yea, thou, who mightest have cast me into a bed of flames, instead of my bed of sickness, and therefore I accept thy correction thankfully. Thus he catches at the blow without retorting it back upon God by any quarrelling discontented language.—William Gurnall.

Verse 9.—“Because thou didst it.” We digest not a blow from our equals, but a blow from our king we can well digest. If the King of kings lays his hand on our backs, let us, beloved, lay our hands on our mouths. I am sure this stopped David’s mouth from venting fretful speeches. “I held my tongue and said nothing.” Why didst thou so, David? “Because thou, Lord, didst it;” and God gives this testimony of such an one; that he is a prudent man that keeps silence at an evil time. Amos v. 13.—Nicholas Estwick, B.D., 1644.

Verse 9.—Perkins, in his “Salve for a Sick Man,” gives the “last words” of many holy men, among others of Calvin:—“I held my tongue, because thou, Lord, hast done it—I mourned as a dove—Lord, thou grindest me to powder, but it sufficeth me because it is thy hand.”

Verse 9.—I wondered once at providence, and called white providence black and unjust, that I should be smothered in a town where no soul will take Christ off my hand. But providence hath another lustre[14] with God than with my bleared eyes. I proclaim myself a blind body, who knoweth not black and white, in the unco[15] course of God’s providence. Suppose that Christ should set hell where heaven is and devils up in glory beside the elect angels (which yet cannot be), I would I had a heart to acquiesce in his way, without further dispute. I see that infinite wisdom is the mother of his judgments, and that his ways pass finding out. I cannot learn, but I desire to learn, to bring my thoughts, will, and lusts in under[16] Christ’s feet, that he may trample upon them. But, alas! I am still upon Christ’s wrong side.—Samuel Rutherford.

Verse 9.—A little girl, in the providence of God, was born deaf and dumb. She was received, and instructed, at an institution established for these afflicted ones. A visitor was one day requested to examine the children thus sadly laid aside from childhood’s common joys. Several questions were asked, and quickly answered by means of a slate and pencil. At length the gentleman wrote, “Why were you born deaf and dumb?” A look of anguish clouded for the moment the expressive face of the little girl; but it quickly passed, as she took her slate, and wrote, “Even so, Father; for so it seemeth good in thy sight.”—Mrs. Rogers, in “The Shepherd King.”

Verse 10.—“Remove thy plague away from me:” thy plague and mine; thine by affliction, mine by passion; thine because thou didst send it, mine because I endure it; thine because it comes from thy justice, mine because it answers my injustice; remit what I have done, and remove what thou hast done. But whosoever laid it on, the Lord will take off.—Thomas Adams.

Verse 10.—“Remove,” etc. Having first prayed off his sin, he would now pray off his pain, though it less troubled him; and for ease he repaireth to Jehovah that healeth, as well as woundeth. Hosea vi. 1.—John Trapp.

Verse 11.—“Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth.” The meaning may be, As the moth crumbles into dust under the slightest pressure, or the gentlest touch, so man dissolves with equal ease, and vanishes into darkness, under the finger of the Almighty.—Paxton’s Illustrations of Scripture.

Verse 11.—“Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth.” Moths I must not omit naming. I once saw some knives, the back bone hafts of which were said to have been half-consumed by them. I also saw the remains of a hair-seated sofa which had been devoured. It is no uncommon thing to find dresses consumed in a single night. In Isaiah li. 6, “wax old” probably refers to a garment that is moth-eaten. So in Psalm vi. 7, and xxxi. 9, “consumed” means moth-eaten; and again in Psalm xxxix. 11.—John Gadsby.

Verse 11.—“Like a moth.” The moths of the East are very large and beautiful, but short lived. After a few showers these splendid insects may be seen fluttering in every breeze, but the dry weather, and their numerous enemies, soon consign them to the common lot. Thus the beauty of man consumes away like that of this gay rover, dressed in his robes of purple, and scarlet, and green.—John Kitto.

Verse 11.—The body of man is as a “garment” to the soul: in this garment sin hath lodged a “moth,” which, by degrees, fretteth and weareth away, first, the beauty, then the strength, and, finally, the contexture of its parts. Whoever has watched the progress of a consumption, or any other lingering distemper, nay, the slow and silent devastations of time alone, in the human frame, will need no farther illustration of this just and affecting similitude; but will discern at once the propriety of the reflection which follows upon it.—“Surely every man is vanity.” George Horne.

Verse 11.—“Surely every man is vanity.” What is greatness? Can we predicate it of man, independently of his qualities as an immortal being? or of his actions, independently of principles and motives? Then the glitter of nobility is not superior to the plumage of the peacock; nor the valour of Alexander to the fury of a tiger; nor the sensual delights of Epicurus to those of any animal that roams the forest.—Ebenezer Porter, D.D., in Lectures on Homiletics, 1834.

Verse 12.—“Hear my prayer, O Lord.” etc. Now, in this prayer of David, we find three things, which are the chief qualifications of all acceptable prayers. The first is humility. He humbly confesses his sins, and his own weakness and worthlessness. We are not to put on a stoical, flinty kind of spirit under our affliction, that so we may seem to shun womanish repinings and complaints, lest we run into the other evil, of despising the hand of God, but we are to humble our proud hearts, and break our unruly passions.... The second qualification of this prayer is, fervency and importunity, which appears in the elegant gradation of the words, “Hear my prayer,” my words; if not that, yet “Give ear to my cry,” which is louder; and if that prevail not, yet, “Hold not thy peace at my tears,” which is the loudest of all; so David, elsewhere, calls it “the voice of my weeping.”... The third qualification is faith, “He who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Heb. xi. 6. And, certainly, as he that comes to God must believe this, so he that believes this, cannot but come to God; and if he be not presently answered, “he that believes makes no haste,” he resolves patiently to wait for the Lord, and to go to no other.—Condensed from Robert Leighton.

Verse 12.—“Hold not thy peace at my tears.” We may, in all humility, plead our heart-breakings and weepings in sense of want of mercies which we crave, and our pantings and faintings after the same.—Thomas Cobbett.

Verse 12.—“For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.” Both in thy judgment expressed (Levit. xxv. 23), and in their own opinion (Heb. xi. 13), Upon which account thou didst take a special care of them, and therefore do so to me also.—Matthew Pool.

Verse 12.—“I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner.” How settled soever their condition be, yet this is the temper of the saints upon earth—to count themselves but strangers. All men indeed are strangers and sojourners, but the saints do best discern it, and most freely acknowledge it. Wicked men have no firm dwelling upon earth, but that is against their intentions; their inward thought and desire is that they may abide for ever; they are strangers against their wills, their abode is uncertain in the world, and they cannot help it. And pray mark, there are two distinct words used in this case, strangers and sojourners. A stranger is one that hath his abode in a foreign country, that is not a native and a denizen of the place, though he liveth there, and in opposition to the natives he is called a stranger: as if a Frenchman should live in England, he is a stranger. But a sojourner is one that intendeth not to settle, but only passeth through a place, and is in motion travelling homeward. So the children of God in relation to a country of their own in another place, namely, heaven, they are denizens there, but strangers in the world; and they are sojourners and pilgrims in regard of their motion and journey towards their country.—Thomas Manton.