Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.
Ver. 9. Plead the cause of the poor and needy.] These are God's great care, as appears in many texts. Job comforted himself in this, that he had been "eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, a father to the poor," &c. Job 29:15-16 Ebedmelech is renowned for pleading the cause of the poor prophet, and so should Pharaoh's butler have been if he had done it sooner. Master Holt, who was of counsel to Master Pryn, when so unjustly censured in the Star Chamber, but refused, through cowardice, to sign his answer, according to promise, being overawed by the prelates, bewailed his own baseness to his wife and friends; and, soon after falling sick for conceit only of the miscarriage of that cause, he died, never going to the Star Chamber after that bloody sentence. a
a New Discoveries of the Prelate's Tyranny, p. 47, 48.