He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors.
Ver. 13. He hath also prepared, &c.] The punishment of ungodly persons is here elegantly set forth by three similitudes. 1. From warfare. 2. From child birth, Psalms 7:14 Psalms 7:3. From hunting, Psalms 7:15,16. Well might the Lord say, "I have used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets," Hosea 12:10. See Trapp on " Hos 12:10 "
He ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors] Heb. the hot burning persecutors, that are set on work by the great red dragon (Ardentes, importing their haste to perpetrate mischief). Such were Felix of Wurtemburg, who swore that ere he died he would ride up to the spurs, and Fornesius, who vowed that he would ride up to the saddle skirts, in the blood of the Lutherans. The archbishop of Tours made suit for the erection of a court called Chambre Ardent, wherein to condemn the French Protestants to the fire. But ere he died he had fire enough, for he was stricken with a disease called The Fire of God; which began at his feet, and so ascended upward, that he caused one member after another to be cut off, and so he died miserably. This was God's burning arrow against a hot burning persecutor. The like may be said of Dioclesian, that bloody tyrant, who had his house burnt over his head with fire from heaven; wherewith he was so frightened that he died soon after (Euseb. l. 5). The previously mentioned Count Felix of Wurtemburg was, the same night that he had so vowed and vaunted, choked in his own blood. So he rode not, but bathed himself, not up to the spurs, but throat, not in the Lutherans' blood, but in his own, before he died. And the like we read of Charles IX of France.