Nevertheless man [being] in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts [that] perish.
Ver. 12. Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not] Howsoever he think to eternalize himself, and be grown never so great, die he must, whether lord or lowly; and die like a beast, a carrion beast (unless he be the better man), but only for this pillow and bolster. At one end of the library at Dublin was a globe, at the other a skeleton; to show, that though a man was lord of all the world, yet he must die, his honour must be laid in the dust. The mortal scythe (saith one) is master of the royal sceptre, and it moweth down the lilies of the crown as well as the grass of the field. Perperam accommodatur hic versiculus, saith another; this verse is not well interpreted of the first man, Adam, to prove that he sinned the same day wherein he was created, and lodged not one night in paradise.
He is like the beasts that perish] Pecoribus, morticinis, saith Junius, the beasts that die of the murrain, and so become carrion, and are good for nothing.