Comentários bíblicos

A false balance, the use of all false weights and measures in commerce,

is abomination, i.e. highly abominable, as the abstract signifies; which is opposed to the false opinion of men, who account it a fineness of wit, or, at worst, but a trivial fault.

To the Lord; partly because this wickedness is acted under a colour of justice; and partly because it is destructive to human society, and especially to the poor, whose patron the Lord owneth himself to be.

When pride cometh, then cometh shame; pride, as it is the effect of folly, so it bringeth a man to contempt and destruction, such persons being commonly hated both by God and by all men.

With the lowly is wisdom; whereby they are kept from those foolish and wicked actions which expose men to shame.

The integrity of the upright, their sincere obedience to God’s laws,

shall guide them; shall keep them from crooked and dangerous courses, and lead them in a right and safe way.

The perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them; those wicked devices by which they design and expect to secure themselves, shall be the instrument of their destruction.

In the day of wrath; in the time of God’s judgments, when he is executing wrath and vengeance upon sinners.

Righteousness, or mercy, as this word is oft rendered; or charity to the poor, which is fitly opposed to riches laid up in store.

Delivereth from death; it moveth God to deliver them ofttimes from temporal calamities, and always from eternal death, where such actions are done from a right principle.

Shall direct his way; shall bring all his designs and endeavours to a happy issue, by comparing this clause with the next.

Shall deliver them from many snares and dangers.

His expectation shall perish; all his hope and felicity, which he placed wholly in earthly things, is lost and gone with him.

The hope of unjust men; so it is a repetition of the same thing in other words. Or, as divers render it, the hope of their strengths, i.e. which they place in their carnal strengths, their riches, children, friends, &c. So this is added by way of aggravation.

Is by God’s providence brought into the same miseries, which either he designed against the righteous, or had formerly inflicted upon the righteous, and now lately removed from them.