Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling.
Ver. 14. Like sheep they are laid in the grave] These fatlings of the world, these brainless young nobleman, that will not be warned by other men's harms, but walk on in the same dark and dangerous ways, whatever cometh of it, these chop into the grave (as a man that walketh in the snow may do suddenly into a marl pit, and there be smothered), or rather are there pent up, as sheep are thrust up in a stall, or stable, to be slaughtered there (and in hell their souls); they lie as grapes in a winepress, pickled herrings in a barrel, stones in a lime furnace, tiles in a brick kiln, &c. Tanquam pecudes, like sheep, saith the psalmist here; and Junius's note is, Morticinas puta in cloacis, exquiliis vel puticulis proiectas; like sheep, that dying of the murrain, are thereupon cast into ditches, jakes, bogs.
Death shall feed on them] They shall be meat for worms, yea, they shall be killed with death, Revelation 2:23, which is worse than all the rest; sin, as a heavy gravestone, presseth them to death, &c.
And the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning] i.e. At the resurrection, when the saints shall share with Christ in his kingdom (when the wicked shall be his footstool), and shall judge the world, yea, the angels. Others by morning understand suddenly, or seasonably, as Psalms 46:5 .
And their beauty shall consume in the grave] All their pomp and bravery wherein they came abroad while alive (as Agrippa and Bernice came to the tribunal with a great deal of fancy, Act 25:23), and with which they affect to be buried in state.
Sic transit gloria mundi .
So passes the honour of the world. 1 Corinthians 7:31 .
From their dwelling] Whence they are carried to the grave, that dark house of all living, Job 30:23. Some render the text thus, Infernus habitaculum ipsis, Hell shall be their habitation. Tremellius thus, Et formam corum consumat infernus receptam ex habitaculo eius, and hell consume their shape (that is, their bodies now reunited to their souls), received out of its house, that is, out of the grave.