When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth: but the righteous shall see their fall.
Ver. 16. When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth.] As saith the proverb of the ancients: Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked. Miserable man hath, by his fall from God, contracted a necessity of sinning against God. And when a rabble of rebels are gotten together, are grown many and mighty, they make account to carry all before them, and not to suffer a godly man to live - as in Spain, and where the Inquisition is admitted. But the righteous shall see their fall; shall see it and rejoice at it, as the Hebrew doctors expound this text by comparing it with Obadiah 1:12,13, "Thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day of his calamity, neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah," &c. "The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance"; being moved with a zeal of God, he shall rejoice with trembling; "he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked"; beholding their ruin he shall become more cautious; a "so that a man shall say," - any man but of an ordinary capacity shall make this observation - "Verily, there is a reward for the righteous; verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth," Psa 58:10-11 that will sink to the bottom the bottle of wickedness, when once filled with those bitter waters. Gen 15:16
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