That they may offer sacrifices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king, and of his sons.
Ver. 10. That they may pray for the life of the king] For God, at his pleasure, cutteth off the spirits of princes, Psalms 76:12, he crops them off with ease, as one would do a flower; slips them off, as one would do a bunch of grapes; as he dealt by Alexander the Great, Attila, that terror of the world, and King Henry II of France, who upon the marriage of his sister to the king of Spain, was so puffed up, that he called himself by a new title, Tres-heureuse Roy, the thrice happy king. But, to confute him, in solemnizing that marriage, he was slain at tilt, by the captain of his guard (though against his will, but not without God's determinate counsel), in the very beginning of his supposed happiness. Death is the only king against whom there is no rising up. The mortal scythe is master of the royal sceptre, saith one, and it moweth down the lilies of the crown as well as the grass of the field; pray, therefore, for the life of the king, saith this king here; let the priests shout and say, Let the king live for ever, Nehemiah 2:3 .
And of his sons] Some of whom had soon died, say some: he therefore calleth for prayers for the preservation of the rest.