Lo, their good [is] not in their hand: the counsel of the wicked is far from me.
Ver. 16. Lo, their good is not in their hand] That is, they are not enriched by their own industry, prudence, piety, &c., but God hath exalted them thus, that he may bring them down again with the greater poise; so some sense the text. Others thus, Their good is not in their hand; that is, they are no masters of them, but are mastered by them; they are servants to their wealth, as the Persian kings were to their wives or concubines, Captivarum suarum captivi (Plut.). And as those stall fed beasts in the Gospel, the recusant guests, I mean, that had bought farms, oxen, &c., or rather were bought of them. - Difficile est opibus non tradere mores. Others make this the sense, and I concur with them, These wicked rich men, buried in a bog of security, condemn God, as if they had their happiness in their own hands, and were petty gods within themselves. But they are deceived. All is in God's hand, who can take away their wealth when he pleaseth. These men may fall sooner than they rose, since they subsist merely by God's manutension, and he may do with his own as he wishes.
The counsel of the wicked is far from me] I am so far from envying their prosperity, that I cannot approve of their course of life, for all their wealth. I am not of their judgment, I like not of their way. O my soul, come not thou into their secret. Let their money perish with them (said that noble Italian convert, Caracciolus, to a Jesuit who tempted him with a great sum), who esteem all the gold in the world worth one day's society with Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit; and cursed be that religion for ever and ever.