Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.
Ver. 20. Thou prevailest for ever against him] This, and the rest of the words to the end of the chapter, some make to be the application of the similitudes; others an amplification only of what he had said, Thou destroyest the hope of man. Thou must needs, when thou over match and over master him, and art never worsted. Exodus 15:3, the Lord is called, "A man of war"; the Chaldee there hath it, The Lord and Victor of wars. And the word here rendered "ever" cometh from a root that signifieth to finish, conquer, and triumph.
And he passeth] sc. Out of the world by a violent or untimely death, Violenta morte aut certe immatura (Merlin), with as ill a will many times as the unjust steward did out of his office, as the Jebusites did out of the fort of Zion, or as the devil out of the demoniac. Sed voluntas Dei necessitas rei; he passeth, because he can neither will nor choose, as they say.
Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away] Eleganter vero mors notatur, immutandi verbo, saith one, Elegantly is death set forth by changing the countenance: for death taketh away the fair and fresh colour of a man, and makes him look wan and withered, pale and ghastly. It is easy to see death, many times, before it come, in the sick man's face, Facies Hippocratica, in his sharp nostrils, thin cheeks, hollow eyes, &c., those harbingers of death, whereby God sendeth for him, and so sendeth him away, extrudit et amandat, as once he did Adam out of Paradise. Lavater's note here is, Propone tibi semper horribilem speciem morris, ut eo minus pecces, Set before thyself always the horrid face of death, to restrain thee from sin.