All [things come] alike to all: [there is] one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as [is] the good, so [is] the sinner; [and] he that sweareth, as [he] that feareth an oath.
Ver. 2. All things come alike to all.] See Trapp on " Ecc 9:1 " Health, wealth, honours, &c., are cast upon good men and bad men promiscuously. God makes a scatter of them, as it were; good men gather them, bad men scramble for them. The whole Turkish empire, saith Luther, is nothing else but a crust a cast by heaven's great housekeeper to his dogs.
And he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.] No surer sign of a profane person, than common and customary swearing. Neither any so good an evidence of a gracious heart, as not only to forbear it, for so one may do by education, and civil conversation, but to "fear an oath" out of an awful regard to the Divine Majesty. Plato and other heathens shall rise up and condemn our common swearers; for they, when they would swear, said no more but Ex animi sententia, b or if they would swear by their Jupiter, out of the mere dread and reverence of his name, they forbare to mention him. Clinias the Pythagorean, out of this regard, would rather undergo a mulct of three talents, than swear. The Merindolians, those ancient French Protestants, were known by this through all the country of Provence, that they would not swear, nor easily be brought to take an oath, except it were in judgment, or making some solemn covenant. c
a Nihil est nisi mica panis.
b Suidas.
c Acts and Mon., 865.