In the way of righteousness [is] life; and [in] the pathway [thereof there is] no death.
Ver. 28. In the way of righteousness is life.] And life, in any sense, is a sweet mercy, a precious indulgence. Life natural is but a little spot of time between two eternities, before and after, but it is of great consequence (for ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas), and given us for this purpose, that glory may be begun in grace, and we have a further and further entrance into the kingdom of heaven here, as Peter saith, 2 Peter 1:11 .
And in the path thereof there is no death.] Christ hath unstinged the first death, and made it of a punishment, a benefit; of a postern to let out temporal life, a street door to let in eternal life. a Surely the bitterness of this death is past to the righteous; there is no gall in it (as the Hebrew word there signifies); nay, there is honey in it, as once there was in the corpse of Samson's dead lion. And for the second death, there is no danger; for they shall pass from the jaws of death to the joys of heaven. Yea, though hell had closed her mouth upon a child of God, it could as little hold him as the whale could Jonah; it must, perforce, regurgitate, and render up such a morsel.
a Mors ianua vitae, porta coeli. - Bern.