Yea, whereto [might] the strength of their hands [profit] me, in whom old age was perished?
Ver. 2. Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me] For, to say the truth (thus Beza here paraphraseth), the strength of those young striplings could not have stood me in any stead at all; and as for the old age of their fathers, it were such, that, having spent the greatest and best part of their life partly in idleness, and partly in divers wicked and lewd pranks, they might worthily seem to have lived in vain all that while. Thus he. The Greeks say, Eργα νεων, and the Latins, Iuniores ad labores, young men are fit for hard labour, because strong and lusty. But these Sanuiones in the text were, through idleness, mere nullities in the world, superfluities in the earth, Jeremiah's rotten girdle, good for nothing but to devour victuals; vermin, apes, monkeys, their whole life was to eat and drink (when they could come by it), and sleep, and sport, and fleer, jeer at God's afflicted, with words as full of scorn as profane wit or rancoured malice can make them. These are excrements in human society; pests, the Scripture styleth them, Psalms 1:1 (λοιμοι. Septuag.).
In whom old age was perished?] Their fathers also were old dottrels, in ipsa senectute, senectute carentes, old, but not wise (Moriae Encore.); like the Brabanti, who are said to be the older the foolisher. Some men live long, but are good for little. Non ille diu vixit, sed diu fuit, saith Seneca of somebody, He hath not lived long, but only been long; as a ship in a storm, he hath been tossed much, but sailed nothing. Those old men who have not gotten wisdom by long experience are not worthy of their years; their old age is perished, and their honour forfeited. The Vulgate rendereth it, They were reckoned unworthy of life itself: Depontani.