If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.
Ver. 23. If the scourge slay suddenly] By scourge here is meant a common calamity, such as rides circuit, compassing a country as a scourge doth a man's body round about. Any sweeping judgment is a swinging scourge in God's hands; such as is the sword, Isaiah 10:26, which when it rides circuit (as a judge) it is in commission, Eze 14:17 Jeremiah 47:6,7, devouring flesh and drinking blood. Thus Attila, the Hun, styled himself God's scourge. Tamerlane was commonly called the wrath of God, the terror of the world. Think the same of famine, pestilence, wild beasts, Ezekiel 14:12, &c., these oft slay suddenly, Isa 30:13 Jeremiah 18:22, as did the sweating sickness here in England, the massacre of France, and that later of Ireland, that scourge, if ever any, slew suddenly the perfect and the wicked. When an overflowing storm sweeps away the wicked, the tail of it may dash their best neighbours.
He laugheth at the trial of the innocent] The Vulgate readeth, He will not laugh at the trial of the innocent; but it is not there in the original. Others thus, will he laugh at the trial of the innocent? q.d. no, he will not. God may seem to slight his own in affliction, as Psalms 77:2,3. The lion lets her whelps roar sometimes, till they do almost kill themselves with roaring. The truth is (and I think the true sense of this Scripture), God scorneth the allegation of innocence, or the justification and plea of the most upright man breathing, in the way of exemption or prevention of his just and wise dispensations, when he pleaseth to inflict them, involving good and bad in the same common calamity (Mr Abbot).