In a moment shall they die, and the people shall be troubled at midnight, and pass away: and the mighty shall be taken away without hand.
Ver. 20. In a moment shall they die] Be they mean or mighty, they are, when God pleaseth, suddenly swept away by the hand of death; as chess men are into the bag, without distinction of kings, dukes, bishops, or common people.
And the people shall be troubled at midnight] As were the Egyptians, when their firstborn were slain in their dead sleep, Exodus 12:29, not without much terror and tumult; and as were the army of Sennacherib, 2 Kings 19:35, and Belshazzar with his Babylon, Daniel 5:30,31. "The people shall be troubled," they shall be shaken as leaves in a great wind, or be carried away as by a mighty torrent; when they were most secure, and dreamed of no such danger. Neither in all these alterations and various occurrences is God unrighteous, since he is debtor to none, neither doth he anything without reason and right.
And pass away] Praeteribunt, id est, peribunt; they shall pass into the grave, as Ecclesiastes 1:4, "One generation passeth, and another cometh"; or they shall perish, as when it is said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away." The Vulgate hath it, Pertransibunt. It is not transibunt, they shall pass, saith Gregory; but pertransibunt, they shall pass through, because the wicked are always passing on to perdition throughout all their lives.
And the mighty shall be taken away without hand] That is, without seeing the hand that smiteth them; which is, saith one, a Divine force, invisibly cutting asunder the thread of their lives in a moment: Psalms 76:12, The Lord cutteth off the spirit of princes. The Hebrew importeth, that he slips them off, as ono should slip off a flower between his finger; or as one should slip off a bunch of grapes, &c. The original here is, They shall take away the mighty, that is, the angels shall as Luk 12:20 hurry them out of the world without hand, that is, without man's help, without human violence.