Commentary on Psalms Volume 2 John Calvin
COMMENTARY ON PSALMS - VOLUME 2 an elevated stage, who appear to be privileged to live in a state of exemption from calamities, as is here described. Now, when we consider that the life of men is full of labor and miseries, and that this is the law and condition of living appointed for all, it is a sore temptation to behold the despisers of God indulging themselves in their luxurious pleasures and enjoying great ease, as if they were elevated above the rest of the world into a region of pleasure, where they had a nest for themselves apart. 644
6. Therefore pride compasseth them as a chain. This complaint proceeds farther than the preceding; for we are here told that although God sees the ungodly shamefully and wickedly abusing his kindness and clemency, he notwithstanding bears with their ingratitude and rebellion. The Psalmist employs a similitude taken from the dress and attire of the body, to show that such persons glory in their evil deeds. The verb,ענקanak, which we have rendered, encompasseth them as a chain, comes from a noun which signifies a chain. The language, therefore, implies that the ungodly glory in their audacity and madness, as if they were richly adorned with a chain of gold: 645 and that violence serves them for raiment, thinking, as they
"They are not dragged to death," says Poole, "either by the hand or sentence of the magistrate, which yet they deserve, nor by any lingering or grievous torments of mind or body, which is the case with many good men; but they enjoy a sweet and quiet death, dropping into the grave like ripe fruit from the tree, without any violence used to them, (compare Job 5:26 and 31:13.) The word translated bands occurs in only one other place of
Scripture, Isaiah 58:6, where in all the ancient versions it is rendered bands But bands will bear various significations. In the Hebrew style it often signifies the pangs of child-birth; and therefore the meaning here may be, they have no pangs in their death; i e., they die an easy death, being suffered to live on to extreme old age, when the flame of life gradually and quietly becomes extinct. It was also used by the Hebrews to express diseases of any kind, and this is the sense, in which Calvin understands it. Thus Jesus says of the "woman who had a spirit of infirmity," a sore disease inflicted upon her by an evil spirit, "eighteen years," "Thou art loosed from thine infirmity," (and loosing, we know, applies to bands:) he again describes her as "this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years;" and farther says, "Ought she not to be loosed from this bond?" that is, cured of this sickness? Luke 13:11, 12, 16. According to this view, the meaning will be, they have no violent diseases in their death Horsley reads, "There is no fatality in their death." After observing that the word,חרצבותtranslated bands, occurs but in one other place in the whole Bible, Isaiah 58:6; where the LXX. have rendered it συνδεσμον, and the Vulgate colligationes, he says, "From its sense there, and from its seeming affinity with the rootsחרףand,צבהI should guess that in a secondary and figurative sense, the word may denote the strongest of all bands or knots, physical necessity, or fate; and in that sense it may be taken here. The complaint is, that the ordinary constitution of the world is supposed to contain no certain provision for the extermination of the impious; that there is no necessary and immediate connection between moral evil and physical, wickedness and death." The Septuagint reads, ὅτι οὺκ ἔστιν ἀνάνευσις ἐν τῶΘανάτω αὐτῶν: "For there is no sign of reluctance in their death." The Vulgate, "Quia non est respectus morti eorum;" "For they do not think of dying," or, "For they take no notice of their death." The Chaldee, "They are not terrified or troubled on account of the day of their death."
"En un lieu de plaisance, et comme pour avoir leur nid a part." — Fr.