Therefore the flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not strengthen his force, neither shall the mighty deliver himself:
Ver. 14. Therefore the flight shall perish from the swift] Men are apt to bless themselves when God curseth, Deuteronomy 29:19, and to bind upon impurity in a common calamity, to make fair weather, when such a tempest is up as shall never be blown over. Or, if worse come, then, as all creatures run to their refuges, Pro 30:25 Psa 104:18 Pro 18:11 Daniel 4:12; Daniel 4:14 Judges 9:50,51 (the hunted hare runs to the form, to the bushes that she formerly haunted, but now these cannot save her), so men in misery bethink themselves of and betake themselves to creature comforts and refuges, either natural, or artificial, as here, but these all serve them as Absalom's mule did her master, hanging between heaven and earth, but rejected of both. Let a man be as swift as Asahel, God can easily overtake him; his sin will find him out, and he shall but in running from his death run to it; as the historian speaketh of those Scots defeated by the English at Musselborough field, that they so strained themselves in running for their lives that they fell down breathless and dead. Surely as the coney that flees to the holes in the rocks doth easily avoid the dogs that pursue her, when the hare that trusts in the swiftness of her legs is at length overtaken and torn in pieces; so those that trust in God shall be secured, whereas those that confide in themselves or the creature shall be surprised, and come to an ill end. David ran to God in distress and was relieved; Saul goes to the witch, and from thence to the sword's point; Judas to the Pharisees, and thence to the halter.
The strong shall not strengthen his force] But be made weak as water. "None of the men of might have found their hands," Psalms 76:5; their hands are palsied, their sinews cracked and crippled. It is God that both strengtheneth and weakeneth the arms in the day of battle, Ezekiel 30:24 .