And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.
Ver. 18. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled.] See Isaiah 28:15. God shall shoot at such with an arrow suddenly; Psa 64:7 and when they shall say, Peace and safety, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape. 1Th 5:3 They made a covenant with death and hell, but death and hell make no covenant with them. Thus it befell the rich fool; Luk 12:20 Alexander the Great, whom his parasites flattered into a fond conceit of an immortality; and Pope Sylvester the second, who dealt with the devil for the popedom, and was persuaded by him that he should never die till he sang mass in Jerusalem; but when he saw how he was cheated, and that he must die, he cried out,
“ Ah miser! aeternos vado damnatus ad ignes. ”