The words of the wicked [are] to lie in wait for blood: but the mouth of the upright shall deliver them.
Ver. 6. The words of the wicked are to lie in wait for blood.] As they think not, so neither speak they the language of the righteous. "Ye are the light of the world"; Mat 5:14 and because the light stands in the light of their wicked ways, as the angel in Balaam's way to his sin, therefore they hate the saints; and, as all hatred is bloody, seek their lives, mixing cruelty with their craft, as Cain, Herod, Julian, &c. The old serpent lends them his seven heads to plot, and his ten horns to push. Their own study and exercise also hath made them expert and skilful in their hellish trade; and the taste of blood hath made them as hungry as hounds after it. Thus I kept the ban dogs at stave's end, said Nicholas Shetterden, martyr, not as thinking to escape them, but that I would see the foxes leap above ground for my blood, if they can reach it, so it be the will of God; yet we shall see them gape and leap for it. a
But the mouth of the upright shall deliver them.] Shall defend harmless men that are helpless. Pro 24:11 Hence those many apologies of Tertullian, Apollonius, Arnobius, and others for the primitive Christians under persecution. Hence we had that unparalleled work, Calvin's Institutions, which was written upon this occasion. Francis, king of France, willing to excuse his cruelty exercised upon his Protestant subjects to the German princes, whose friendship he then desired, wrote to them, that he only punished Anabaptists for their contempt of the Scriptures, and of all civil government. Calvin, though then but twenty-five years of age, not able to bear that blur cast upon the reformed religion under the name of those sectaries, set forth that excellent work, as well to vindicate the truth, as to plead for the innocence of those that professed it. b
a Acts and Mon.
b Scultet., Annal., 454.