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Ecc_5:8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for [he that is] higher than the highest regardeth; and [there be] higher than they.
Ver. 8. If thou seest the oppression of the poor.] And so mayest be drawn to doubt of Divine providence, and to withdraw thine awful regard to the divine Majesty, to forego godliness, and to turn fiat atheist, as Diagoras and Averroes did.
Marvel not at the matter.] Nil admirari prope res est una Numici. {a} A wise man wonders at nothing; he knows there is good cause why God should allow it so to be, and gives him his glory. Opera Dei sunt in mediis contrariis, saith Luther: {b} God’s works are effected usually by contraries. And this he doth éíá êáé ìáëëïí èáõìáæçôáé , that he may be the more marvelled at, saith Nazianzen. Hence he commonly goes a way by himself, drawing light out of darkness, good out of evil, heaven out of hell, that his people may feelingly say, "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders." {Exo_15:11} "Verily there is a reward for the righteous; verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth." {Psa_58:11}
For he that is higher than the highest regardeth.] And "wherein they deal proudly, he is above them," {Exo_18:11} and overtops them; {Psa_2:4} sets a day for them, and "sees that their day is coming." {Psa_37:13} "The Most High cuts off the spirit of princes" {Psa_76:12} - he slips them off, as one should slip off a flower between his fingers; or he cuts them off, as grapegatherers do the clusters off the vines; such a metaphor there is in the original - "He is terrible to all the kings of the earth," those dread sovereigns, those hammers of the earth and scourges of the world, {c} as Atillas styled himself; such as Sennacherib, whom God so subdued and mastered, that the Egyptians, in memory of it, set up his statue in the temple of Vulcan, with this inscription, Eìå ôéò ïñåùí åõóåâçò åóôï : {d} Let all that behold me learn to fear God. It was therefore excellent counsel that Jehoshaphat gave his judges: "Take heed what you do, for ye judge not for man, but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment. Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord our God be upon you; take heed and do it." {2Ch_19:6} Look upon him that overlooks all your doings, saith he, and then learn to sit upon the tribunal, in as great though not in so slavish a fear of doing wrong, as Olanes in the history did upon the flayed skin of his father Sisannus, nailed by Cambyses on the judgment seat; or as a Russian judge that fears the boiling caldron or open battocking; or the Turkish senate, when they think the great Turk to stand behind the arras {e} at the dangerous door. In fine, let the grandees and potentates of the earth know and acknowledge with Constantine, Valentinian, and Theodosius, three great emperors, as Socrates reports of them, that they are but Christi vasalli, Christ’s vassals; and that as he is Excelsus super excelsos, high above all, even the highest, so he hath other high ones at hand - viz., the holy angels, who can "resist the King of Persia," as Michael the prince did; {Dan_10:13} fright the Syrians with a panic terror; {2Ki_7:6} smite the Assyrians with an utter destruction; {Isa_37:36} deliver Peter from the hand of Herod, and from the expectation of the Jews. {Act_12:11} What a wonderful difference in the slaughter of the firstborn of Egypt! {Exo_12:23-32} Tyrants shall be sure, sooner or later, to meet with their match. Look what a hand the Ephori had over the King of Sparta; the tribunes had over the Roman consuls; and the Prince Palgrave of Rhine ought, by the ancient orders, to have over the Emperor of Germany ( Palatino haec dignitatis praerogativa est, ut ipsum Caesarem iudicare et damnare possit, quoties scilicet lis ei ab aliquo ordinum imperii movetur; { f} the Palgrave hath power to judge and pass sentence upon the emperor himself, when any of the states of Germany do sue him at the law); the same and more hath God and his angels over the mightiest magnificoes in the world. "Lebanon shall fail by a mighty one," {Isa_10:34} i.e., by an angel, as some interpret it.
{a} Horat.
{b} Luther. in Genes.
{c} Mundi flagellum. Scourge of the world.
{d} Herodot.
{e} A hanging screen of this material formerly placed round the walls of household apartments, often at such a distance from them as to allow of people being concealed in the space between.
{f} Parei Hist. pros. med., 771.