Say not thou, I will recompense evil; [but] wait on the LORD, and he shall save thee.
Ver. 22. Say not thou, I will recompense evil.] Much less, swear it, as some miscreants do; to whom, Est vindicta bonum, et vita dulcius ipsa. In reason, tallying of injuries is but justice. It is the first office of justice, saith Cicero, to hurt nobody, unless first provoked by injury. Whereupon Lactantius; O quam simplicem veramque sententiam, saith he, duorum verboram adiectione corrupit! Oh what a dainty sentence marred the orator by adding those two last words! How much better Seneca! Immane verbum est ultio. Revenge is a base word, but a worse deed; it being no less an offence to requite an injury than to offer it, as Lactantius a hath it. The mild and milken man, as his name speaks him, was such an enemy to revenge, that he dislikes the waging either of law or of war with any that have wronged us. Wherein, though I cannot be of his mind, yet I am clearly of the opinion that not revenge, but right should be sought in both. Neither can I hold it valour, but rashness, in our Richard I, who, being told, as he sat at supper, that the French king had besieged his town of Vernoil in Normandy, protested that he would not turn his back until he had confronted the French; and thereupon he caused the wall of his palace that was before him to be broken down toward the south, and posted to the sea coast immediately into Normandy.
But wait on the Lord.] Who claims vengeance as his, Deu 32:35 Rom 12:19 See Trapp on " Deu 32:35 " See Trapp on " Rom 12:19 " and will strike in for the patient, as he did, Numbers 12:2,3. While Moses is dumb, God speaks; deaf, God hears and stirs. Make God your chancellor in case no law will relieve, and you shall do yourselves no disservice. If compelled to go a mile, rather than revenge, go two, yea, as far as the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace will carry you, and God will bring you back "with everlasting joy." Isa 35:10 This is the way to be even with him that wrongs you, nay, to be above him.
a Non minus mali est injuriam referre quam inferre. - Lact. lnstit., lib. vi. c. 20.