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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Calvin Complete Commentary - Psalms 49:16 - 49:16
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16Be not thou afraid The Psalmist repeats, in the form of an exhortation, the same sentiment which he had formerly expressed, that the children of God have no reason to dread the wealth and power of their enemies, or to envy their evanescent prosperity; and as the best preservative against despondency, he would have them to direct their eyes habitually to the end of life. The effect of such a contemplation will be at once to check any impatience we might be apt to feel under our short-lived miseries, and to raise our minds in holy contempt above the boasted but delusory grandeur of the wicked. That this may not impose upon our minds, the prophet recalls us to the consideration of the subject of death — that event which is immediately at hand, and which no sooner arrives than it strips them of their false glory, and consigns them to the tomb. So much is implied in the words, He shall not carry away all these things when he dieth (232) Be their lives ever so illustrious in the eyes of their fellow-creatures, this glory is necessarily bounded by the present world. The same truth is further asserted in the succeeding clause of the verse, His glory shall not descend after him Infatuated men may strain every nerve, as if in defiance of the very laws of nature, to perpetuate their glory after death, but they never can escape the corruption and nakedness of the tomb; for, in the language of the poet Juvenal, -
“Mots sola fatetur Quantula sint hominum corpuscula,” —
“ is death which forces us to confess how worthless the bodies of men are.”
(232) “ ‘ of all;’ that is, ought of all that he hath. ‘ we brought nothing into the world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out.’” —Ainsworth.