Psalms 73:19,20 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They are brought to desolation as in a moment Their fall is wonderful, both for its greatness, and for its suddenness. They are utterly consumed with terrors With the horrors of their own minds; or rather, with God's judgments unexpectedly seizing upon them. As a dream when one awaketh Their happiness is like that of a dream, wherein a man seems highly pleased and transported with ravishing delights, but when he awakes he finds himself deceived and unsatisfied. O Lord, when thou awakest Arisest to punish them. Or rather, when they shall awake; namely, out of the pleasant dream of this sinful life, by death and the torments following. For the Hebrew is only בעיר, bagnir, in awaking, an expression which may be applied either to God or to them, as the context directs, and the latter application seems to agree best with the metaphor here before mentioned. Thou shalt despise their image That is, all their felicity and glory, which, as indeed it ever was, so now shall evidently be discerned to be no real, or substantial and solid thing, but a mere image, or shadow, or vain show, which can neither abide with them, nor yield them satisfaction. Thus the word rendered pomp, Acts 25:23, is, in the Greek, φαντασια, a mere fancy and imagination. And Psalms 39:6, man is said to walk in a vain show; in the LXX., εν εικονι, in an image, the word used by these interpreters here. God is said to despise the image, when they awake, not really, for in that sense God ever did despise it, even when they were in the height of all their glory; but declaratively, things being often said to be done in Scripture when they appear or are manifest. The sense is, Thou shalt pour contempt upon them; make them despicable to themselves and others, notwithstanding all their riches; shalt raise them to shame and everlasting contempt. The LXX. render it, τον εικονα αυτων εξουδενωσεις, Thou shalt bring to naught, or make nothing of their image. God will render utterly contemptible even in their own sight, as well as in that of himself, of his holy angels, and the spirits of the righteous, those imaginary and fantastic pleasures for which they have lost the substantial joys and glories of his heavenly kingdom. For it is evident that what the psalmist here affirms, concerning the end of the wicked, cannot be understood, consistently with the rest of the Psalm, of their temporal destruction, but must be interpreted of their future wretched state in another world, which is often represented, in Scripture, by death and destruction; and so, indeed, these verses explain it. How are they brought to desolation in a moment, that is, the moment when they pass out of this life to another. It is then only that the wicked will be thoroughly awakened to see their misery, especially if they die without much pain or anguish, in a stupid, thoughtless way, as seems to be intimated Psalms 73:4. And here let us reflect, with Dr. Horne, If “the sudden alteration which death makes in the state of a powerful and opulent sinner, cannot but affect all around him, though they behold but one part of it; how much more would they be astonished and terrified if the curtain between the two worlds were withdrawn, and the other half of the change exposed to view! Let faith do that which sight cannot do;” let it show us, that the life of the ungodly is a sleep; their happiness a dream, illusive and transitory; at best a shadow, afterward nothing; and that, at the day of death, the soul is roused out of this sleep, the dream vanishes, and the sinner finds himself consigned to everlasting torments, “and then the ungodly, however wealthy and honourable, will surely cease to be the objects of our envy.”