Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.
Ver. 15. Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up] He not only, when he pleaseth, imprisoneth men, but waters also, that they cannot get out of the clouds, those bottles of rain, those airy sponges, vessels as thin as the liquor that is contained in them; it is from the power of God that they dissolve not upon us at once, and overwhelm us. Bartholinus reports that in the year of grace 1551 a great number of men and cattle were drowned by the sudden breaking of a cloud; various vineyards, stone walls, strong houses, were destroyed and ruined. At sea, sometimes, ships are by the same means sunk; seamen call it a water spout. Again, it is by the anger and judgments of God that the clouds are sometimes so closed up, that they yield no more water than iron or adamant. "If I shut up heaven," saith he, "that there be no rain," 2Ch 7:13 Deuteronomy 28:23,24. God threateneth, as a punishment of men's sins, that the heavens over their heads shall be brass, and the earth under them shall be iron; that the rain of their land shall be made powder and dust; from heaven shall it come down upon them, &c., by exceeding great drought, grains of dust shall ascend into the air with the wind, and come down as the drops of rain in a shower when it is kindly weather. Thus it was in Ahab's days, 1 Kings 18:1; See Trapp on " Joe 1:20 "
And they dry up] The rivers, fruits of the earth, roots of trees, all dry up, languish, and perish; fevers also, and other acute diseases, abound.
Also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth] They did so with an accent in the general deluge, and in Deucalion's flood in Thessaly, besides many other great tracts and parts of the earth overturned by water. Pliny and Seneca give us sundry instances of towns and countries laid waste by water (Plin. Nat. Hist., lib. ii. cap. 90, 92; Sen. Nat. Quaest., lib. vi. cap. 23). What great damage was lately done about Amsterdam by water, and what breaking down of bridges, mills, and other houses, by excessive rain and floods thereupon, besides marring of grounds and rotting of cattle in many places among us, needeth not here to be related.