Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/3_500_e.lzh/3_566.TXT

Text File | 1995-01-26 | 9KB | 171 lines

\*Ver. 5. \\His ways are always grievous\\, &c.] To God
and to his people; or, %his ways cause terror% {a}, so Aben
Ezra; make men fear; as antichrist has made the
whole world tremble at him, \\#Re 13:4\\; or, %his ways
are defiled%, as the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin render
it; for to him is nothing pure, his mind and conscience
being defiled, \\#Tit 1:15\\; or, %his ways always
remain% {b}; they are always the same, there is no change
in them for the better: or they %prosper% {c} as Jarchi
interprets it; and this is sometimes stumbling to the
saints, \\#Jer 12:1 Ps 73:2,3\\;
\*\\thy judgments are
far above, out of his sight\\: meaning either the laws,
statutes, and commandments of God, which are not
taken notice of by him; but his own decrees or orders
are set in the room of them; or the examples of punishment
inflicted on wicked men, as on the old world,
on Sodom and Gomorrah, the Egyptians, and other
nations; these are not regarded, when they should
be a terror to him;
\*\\[as for] all his enemies, he puffeth
at them\\; who are the poor saints, and are looked upon
by antichrist as feeble creatures, and all their efforts
against him and his kingdom are treated with contempt:
he blows upon them, and suggests that he
can cause them to fall with the breath of his mouth,
or strike them down with a straw or a feather; see
\\#Ps 12:6\\.

\*Ver. 6. \\He hath said in his heart\\, &c.] To and
within himself, he thought in his own mind; for the
thought is the word or speech of the mind, \~logov endiauetov\~;
\*\\I shall not be moved\\; from his prosperous and happy
condition, abounding: with riches and honours; from
his seat of empire, over kings, princes, and the nations
of the world; flattering himself that it would
never be otherwise with him than it is: even %to generation
and generation%, I shall not be moved; so the
words may be rendered;
\*\\for I shall never [be] in adversity\\, or %in evil% {d}:
meaning either the evil of sin; so
asserting his innocence, wiping himself clean of all
iniquity, claiming to himself the title of %holiness% itself,
and the character of infallibility; giving out that he is
impeccable, and cannot err; when he is not only
almost, but altogether, in all evil; and is \~o anomov\~, the
lawless and wicked one, the man of sin, who is nothing
but sin itself. The Targum paraphrases the
whole thus; %I shall not be moved from generation to
generation from doing evil%; and so it is a boast of impiety,
and that none can restrain him from it, no one
having a superior power over him; see \\#Ps 12:4\\. Or
the evil of affliction, or calamity; wherefore we render
it %adversity%, so Jarchi and Aben Ezra understand
it: the note of the former is,
\*"evil shall not come
"upon me in my generation,"\*
\*or for ever; and the
latter compares it with \\#Nu 11:15\\; Kimchi and
Ben Melech interpret it of long life. It is a vaunt of
antichrist, promising himself a continuance of his
grandeur, ease, peace, and prosperity; in which he
will be wretchedly disappointed. The language and
sense are much the same with that of the antichristian
Babylon, \\#Re 18:7,8\\.

\*Ver. 7. \\His mouth is full of cursing\\, &c.] Or, %he
has filled his mouth with cursing% {e} God and good men,
his superiors, himself and others. The word signifies
%an oath%; and may design either a profane oath, taking
the name of God in vain; or an oath on a civil account,
a false oath, taken with a design to defraud and
deceive others, as follows, and intends perjury; and
this, as applicable to antichrist, regards his mouth
speaking great things and blasphemies against God,
and uttering curses and anathemas against the saints,
\\#Re 13:5,6\\;
\*\\and deceit and fraud\\; such as flattery
and lying, which are both used by him with an intention
to impose upon and deceive. The apostle, in
\\#Ro 3:14\\; renders both these words by one, %bitterness%;
which may be said of sin in general, which is a
very bitter thing; though it is rolled as a sweet morsel
in the mouth of a wicked man, yet in the issue it
is bitterness to him: and it is applicable to sinful words,
which are bitter in their effects to those against whom
they are spoken, or who are deceived and imposed
upon by them: and, as they refer to antichrist, may
have respect to the lies in hypocrisy spoken by him,
and to the deceitfulness of unrighteousness, by which
he works upon those that perish, \\#1Ti 4:2 2Th 2:10\\;
\*\\under his tongue [is] mischief and vanity\\; alluding
to serpents, who have little bags of poison under
their teeth; see \\#Ps 140:3\\; Kimchi and Ben Melech
observe, that the heart is under the tongue, being
lower than it, and so denotes the wickedness which
that is full of, and devises continually, and is latent
in it until discovered; and is mischievous iniquity,
injurious to God, and the honour of his law, and to
fellow creatures; and especially to the saints, whose
persons, characters, and estates, are aimed at; but in
the issue it is all vanity, and a fruitless attempt, being
blasted by God, and overruled for good to him; see
\\#Isa 54:17\\;

\*Ver. 8. \\He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages\\, &c.]
Which were by the wayside, where
thieves and robbers harboured, and out of which they
came, and robbed passengers as they came by. The
word {f} signifies %palaces% or %courts%: and so it is rendered
by the Chaldee paraphrase and Syriac version;
and so the allusion is not to mean thieves and robbers,
but to persons of note and figure. Hence the Septuagint
and Vulgate Latin, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions,
render it, %he sitteth in lurking places with the
rich%; and may be fitly applied to the pope and his
cardinals. Antichrist sits in the temple of God, and
by his emissaries gets into the villages, the particular
churches and congregations of saints, where they lie in
ambush to do mischief, to corrupt their faith, worship,
and manners; and like thieves and robbers enter
in to steal, kill, and destroy;
\*\\in secret places doth he
murder the innocent\\; the harmless lambs and sheep of
Christ; who, though they are not without sin in themselves,
yet are innocent with respect to the cause
and the things for which they suffer: these are the
saints and prophets and martyrs of Jesus, whose blood
is shed by antichrist; and the taking away of their
lives is reckoned murder with God; and is so styled in
the Scriptures, \\#Re 9:21\\; though the antichristian
party call it doing God good service, and impute
it to zeal for the good of holy church; and yet this
they choose to do in secret, by private massacres, o,
by the inquisition; which having condemned men to
death, delivers them over to the secular power to execute
the sentence on them: just as the Jews delivered
Christ to the Roman governor, to shift off the sin and
blame from themselves; murder being what no one cares
to be known in, or chargeable with;
\*\\his eyes are
privily set against the poor\\: the word \^hklx\^, rendered
%poor%, is used nowhere but in this psalm, in which it is
used three times, here, and in \\#Ps 10:1-4\\; and in the
plural number in \\#Ps 10:10\\. It is translated %poor% both in
the Chaldee paraphrase and Septuagint version, and in
those that follow them. In the Arabic language it
signifies %black% {g}, and may design such who are black by
reason of persecution and affliction, who go mourning
all the day long on account of sin, their own and
others; and because of the distresses and calamities of
the church and people of God. These the eyes of the
wicked watch and observe, and are set against them to
do them all the mischief they can; their eyes are full
of envy and indignation at them, though it is all in a
private and secret way. The allusion is to thieves
and robbers, who hide themselves in some secret
place, and from thence look out for them that pass
by, and narrowly observe whether they are for their
purpose, and when it will be proper to come out and
seize upon them.

{a} \^wlyxy\^ %terrent%, Cocceius.
{b} %Permanent sive perdurant%, Lutherus, Gejerus.
{c} Prosperantur, Musculus, Calvin, Ainsworth, Piscator.
{d} \^erb\^ %in malo%, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius,
Gejerus; so Ainsworth.
{e} \^alm whyp hla\^.
{f} \^Myrux\^ \~aulav\~, Symmachus in Drusius; %atriorum%, Munster; so
Hammond, Ainsworth, & Michaelis.
{g} %Chalae, valde niger fuit%, Golius, col. 646.