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14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
Ver. 14. Ye know not what, &c.] God delights to cross such vain boasters, and to confute their confidences, that speak and live as if their lives were riveted upon eternity. They might easily observe that many things happen between the cup and the lip, between the chin and the chalice. Ne glorietur igitur accinctus quasi discinctus. Sell not the hide before ye have taken the beast. Who knows what a great bellied day may bring forth? Pro_27:1. While a woman is yet with child, none can tell what kind of birth it will be, Luk_12:16-17.
It is even a vapour] Thy breath is in thy nostrils, ever ready to puff out; at the next puff of breath thou mayest blow away thy life. Petrarch relates about a certain holy man, that being invited to a feast on the morrow, he answered, I have not had a tomorrow to dispose of this many a year; if you would have anything from me now, I am ready (lib. iii. Memor.). Mere man is but the dream of a dream, but the generation of a fancy, but a poor feeble, unable, dying flash, but the curious picture of nothing. Can a picture continue that is drawn upon the ice? What is man, saith Nazianzen, but soul and soil, breath and body ( íïõò êáé ÷ïõò , ex Gen_2:7); a puff of wind the one, a pile of dust the other, no solidity in either? Surely every man in his best estate, when he is best underlaid, and settled upon his best bottom, is altogether vanity, Psa_39:5. Two fits of an ague could shake great Tamerlane to death, in the midst of his great hopes and greatest power, when he was preparing for the utter rooting out of the Othoman family, and the conquest of the Greek empire. (Turk. Hist.) What is man’s body but a bubble the soul the wind that filleth it? the bubble riseth higher and higher till at last it breaketh; so doth the body from infancy to youth, and thence to age. So that it is improper to ask when we shall die; but rather when we shall make an end of dying (said a divine); for first the infancy dieth, then the childhood, then the youth, then age, and then we make an end of dying. Should we then live and trade as if our lives were riveted upon eternity? To blame were those Agrigentines who did eat, build, &c., as though they should never die.
Ver. 14. Ye know not what, &c.] God delights to cross such vain boasters, and to confute their confidences, that speak and live as if their lives were riveted upon eternity. They might easily observe that many things happen between the cup and the lip, between the chin and the chalice. Ne glorietur igitur accinctus quasi discinctus. Sell not the hide before ye have taken the beast. Who knows what a great bellied day may bring forth? Pro_27:1. While a woman is yet with child, none can tell what kind of birth it will be, Luk_12:16-17.
It is even a vapour] Thy breath is in thy nostrils, ever ready to puff out; at the next puff of breath thou mayest blow away thy life. Petrarch relates about a certain holy man, that being invited to a feast on the morrow, he answered, I have not had a tomorrow to dispose of this many a year; if you would have anything from me now, I am ready (lib. iii. Memor.). Mere man is but the dream of a dream, but the generation of a fancy, but a poor feeble, unable, dying flash, but the curious picture of nothing. Can a picture continue that is drawn upon the ice? What is man, saith Nazianzen, but soul and soil, breath and body ( íïõò êáé ÷ïõò , ex Gen_2:7); a puff of wind the one, a pile of dust the other, no solidity in either? Surely every man in his best estate, when he is best underlaid, and settled upon his best bottom, is altogether vanity, Psa_39:5. Two fits of an ague could shake great Tamerlane to death, in the midst of his great hopes and greatest power, when he was preparing for the utter rooting out of the Othoman family, and the conquest of the Greek empire. (Turk. Hist.) What is man’s body but a bubble the soul the wind that filleth it? the bubble riseth higher and higher till at last it breaketh; so doth the body from infancy to youth, and thence to age. So that it is improper to ask when we shall die; but rather when we shall make an end of dying (said a divine); for first the infancy dieth, then the childhood, then the youth, then age, and then we make an end of dying. Should we then live and trade as if our lives were riveted upon eternity? To blame were those Agrigentines who did eat, build, &c., as though they should never die.