With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;
Ver. 14. With kings and counsellors of the earth] q.d. Those that here have been most negotious, and (as the nobles of the earth) have had greatest matters in hand, with those should I have been coupled in the grave, that congregation house of all living (πανηγυρις), as it is called, Job 30:23. That long or old home, Ecclesiastes 12:5. Heaven is called the congregation house of God's firstborn, Hebrews 12:23, and their house not made with hands, 2 Corinthians 5:1. But not many kings or nobles meet here, 1 Corinthians 1:26, because strait is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth to it; there must be stripping and stopping, which great men cannot frame to. It was a poor comfort to Henry VIII to be told upon his death bed, that he should now go to the place of kings. And a small commendation to Henry II, that some few hours before he died, seeing a list of their names who had conspired against him, and finding therein two of his own sons, he fell into a grievous passion, both cursing his sons, and the day wherein himself was born; and in that distemperature departed the world, which himself had so often distempered. He went indeed to his grave, and slept with his fathers; yea, he was royally interred under a stately monument, meant here, haply, by building desolate places for themselves: Absalom had erected a pillar for this purpose; and the Egyptian kings their pyramids, to perpetuate their memories. The Spanish friar was wont to say, there were but few princes in hell; for why? because there were but few in all. Confer Ezekiel 26:20. With these Job, had he died prematurely, or never seen the light, might have been fellowed: for death is the only king against whom there is no rising up, Proverbs 30:31, and the mortal since his master of the royal sceptre, mowing down the lilies of the crown as well as the grass of the field, Sceptra igonibus aequat. The unknown scepter makes equal.