Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,
Ver. 4. Hear this, ye that swallow up the needy] That seep them up as drink (our word seep seems to come of the Hebrew Shaaph), that would make but a breakfast, nay, but a bit of them; that would swallow them at once down their wide gullets, and do, for that purpose, pant and even faint, as well nigh windless, after them, to devour them. Hence they are called man eaters, cannibals, Psalms 14:4. See Amos 2:7. See Trapp on " Amo 2:7 "
Even to make the poor of the land to fail] Heb. the meek of the, land. Poverty should meeken and tame men's spirits; howbeit, some are humbled but not humble, low but not lowly. Those that are both are often oppressed by the great ones of the earth; and even devoured, as the lesser fish are by the bigger. "Ye have condemned and killed the just," saith St James to the wicked rich men of his time, "and he doth not resist you," James 5:6. He only committeth his cause to him that judgeth righteously, 1 Peter 2:23, and indeed he need do no more than so; for God is the poor man's king, as James V of Scotland was termed for his charity; yea, he is the world's refuge, Awlen Penaugh, as the Great Turk vain gloriously styleth himself, and would have the world to take notice, that such poor people as lament to him shall be relieved by him, although his ministers fail them or abuse them, through their injustice, to make the poor of the land fail. "For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him," Psalms 12:5. Neither doth God say it only (though that were sufficient), but swear it too in this chapter, yea, in this text (the two next following verses are put in as by a parenthesis), and these cormorants are called upon to hear it, and not to pass it by with a deaf ear, tanquam monstra marina, as such kind of creatures used to do.