If a man beget an hundred [children], and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also [that] he have no burial; I say, [that] an untimely birth [is] better than he.
Ver. 3. If a man beget an hundred children.] As Ahab did half a hundred, after that God had threatened to cut off all his house, as it were in contempt of the divine threatening. And as Proculus Caesar got twenty maids with child in fifteen days' space, as Pliny a reports. Erasmus b mentioneth a maid of Eubcea, called Combe, that being married to a husband, brought him a hundred children. Like enough it might be luctuosa faecunditas, as Jerome c saith of Laeta, who buried many children.
And live many years.] So that he be trisaeclisenex, as Nestor was of old, and Iohannes de temporibus, a Frenchman, not many ages since, to whom I may add that old, old, very old man, d that died of late years, having been born in Henry VII's days, or Edward IV's.
And his soul be not filled with good.] Though he be filled with years, and filled with children, that may survive and succeed him in his estate, yet if he be a covetous wretch, a miserable muckworm, that enjoys nothing, as in the former verse, is not master of his wealth, but is mastered by it, lives beside what he hath, and dies to save charges - as the bee in Camden's Remains.
And also that he have no burial.] He leaves nothing to bring him honestly home, as they say; or if he do, yet his ungrateful, greedy heirs deny him that last honour, so that he is buried "with the burial of an ass," Jer 22:19 as Coniah; suffered to rot and stink above ground, as that Assyrian monarch, Isa 14:19-20 and after him Alexander the Great, who lay unburied thirty days together. So Pompey the Great, of whom Claudian the poet sings thus,
“ Nudus pascit aves, iacet en qui possidet orbem,
Exiguae telluris inops. ” -
And a similar story about our William the Conqueror, and various other greedy engrossers of the world's good. See here the poisonful and pernicious nature of niggardliness and covetousness, that turns long life and large issue, those sweetest blessings of God, into bitter curses. And with it take notice of the just hand of God upon covetous old men, that they should want comely burial; which is usually one of their greatest cares, as Plutarch observeth. For giving the reason why old men, that are going out of the world, should be so earnestly bent upon the world, he saith, it is out of fear that they shall not have τους θρεψοντας και τους θοψαντας , friends to keep them while they are alive, and some to bury them when they are dead.
I say that an untimely birth. ] I affirm it in the word of truth, and upon mature deliberation, that an untimely birth - not only a naked young child, as aforesaid, that is carried ab utero ad urnam, from the womb to the tomb, from the birth to the burial - but an abortive, that coming too soon into the world, comes not at all; and, by having no name, finds itself a name, as Pliny speaks of the herb anonymus.
a Lib. vii.
b Erasm. in Chilia.
c Jerome, Epist. 7.
d Parr.