His watchmen [are] blind: they are all ignorant, they [are] all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.
Ver. 10. His watchmen are blind; they are all ignorant.] Invehit in Pseudepiscopos, such as were, and are still in part, the popish clergy; those of the ninth age especially, and not much better a little before Luther stickled: blind leaders of the blind, lamentably ignorant, as the Bishop of Dunkeld, in Scotland, for instance, who professed that he knew neither the New Testament nor the Old. So Bishop Albert, reading the Bible, and being asked by a nobleman what book it was he read; I know not, said he, what book it is, but all that I read in it is contrary to our religion. a As for the other ill qualities of the watchmen here inveighed against, Hugo the cardinal said, that the devil had two daughters, Covetousness and Luxury; the former he had heretofore married out to the Jews, the latter to the Gentiles; but now the monks and priests had gotten them both from their old husbands and taken them for their own use. The Hebrew critics have observed, that the word here rendered watchmen, hath a tzaddi larger than ordinary, to show what odious creatures such are as are here described. Hebrew Text Note
They are all dumb dogs that cannot bark,] i.e., Will not deal plainly and faithfully with men's souls; but either preach not at all, or placentia only, toothless truths. Pliny b tells of the dogs in Rome that were set to keep the capitol; because, when the Gauls scaled it, the dogs being fed too full, lay sleeping, and did not give warning, they not only hanged them up, but every year on that day of the year, hanged up certain dogs in the city for exemplary justice; yea, crucified them alive upon an older tree. Let dumb dogs and parasitical preachers, treacherous to men's souls, take heed they be not one day hanged in hell.
Sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.] Non dormiunt solum, sed dedita opera dormiunt; c so full they have farced themselves, and so deeply drunk they are, that they sleep soundly, though lions roar, and wolves worry the poor flock, and that many times far enough from the fold, wherein they show themselves to be worse than Ulysses' swine herd, of whom Homer saith -
“ ουδε συβωτη
‘ Hνοανεν αυτοθι κοιτος ιων απο κοιμηθηναι, ”
That he would not be drawn to sleep from his swine sty.
a Acts and Mon.
b Lib xxix. cap. 4.
c Somnolentia pastorum luporum est gaudium.