Shall not his excellency make you afraid? and his dread fall upon you?
Ver. 11. Shall not his excellency make you afraid?] Heb. His highness, his majesty, his surpassing sublimity and transcendent glory; shall not this frighten you, and rein you in from wrongly dealing and warping? "Who would not fear thee, O King of nations? for to thee doth it appertain," Jeremiah 10:7. And, "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence?" Jeremiah 5:22. If an earthly king be so dread a sovereign; if the glory of angels hath so terrified the best saints on earth, that they could hardly outlive such an apparition; what shall we think of the great and terrible God, as he is called, Nehemiah 1:5, the first motion of whose anger shall put men into disorder, and the brightness of his offended majesty strike your spirits with astonishment? It is reported of Augustus, the emperor, and likewise of Tamerlane, that warlike Scythian, that in their eyes sate such a rare majesty, as a man could hardly endure to behold them without closing his own; and many in talking with them, and often beholding them, have become dumb (Turk. Hist. 236, 415). Now the Lord of glory as far outshineth any mortal wight as the sun in his strength doth a clod of clay; and this made Job cry out, Job 9:34, "Let not his fear terrify me." Be not thou a terror to me, O Lord, saith holy Jeremiah, Jeremiah 17:17; and, The Lord most high is terrible, saith David, Psalms 47:2. Most high he is, and therefore terrible.
And his dread fall upon you?] Some read the whole verse thus: Shall not this acceptation of him make you afraid, seeing his dread will fall upon you? q.d. Let the sense of your sin and the fear of his wrath, ready to seize upon you, deter you from passing an unrighteous sentence, and from harbouring such low conceits of God.