How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.
Ver. 18. How do the beasts groan] The wild beasts groan in their kind.
The herds of cattle] Home and tame beasts, as oxen,
&c., are perplexed] as not knowing what to do; it is the same word with that, Esther 3:15. God had "hid his face" (withdrawn his hand), "and they were troubled; he taketh away their breath" (for lack of pasture), "they die and return to their dust," as David telleth us in his psalm, Psalms 104:29. Epiphanius's physiologer reporteth of the bird called Charadius, that being brought where a sick man lieth, if he look upon the sick with a fixed and unremoved eye there is hopes of recovery, but if he look another way the disease is deadly. Sure it is, that if God look in mercy upon man and beast they are cared and catered for, Psalms 36:7; Psalms 104:27; Psalms 145:15,16, &c. and the contrary. Yea, the flocks of sheep, &c., which yet can bite upon the bare, live with a little, and get pasture where the larger creatures cannot come.