A brutish man knoweth not,.... The lovingkindness of the Lord, and his faithfulness, nor how to show them forth, nor his great works and deep thoughts; man was made originally far above the brute creatures, and had them all under his dominion; but, sinning, became like the beasts that perish; and is in Scripture often compared to one or other of them, as the horse, ass, c. a brutish man is one that only knows things naturally, as brute beasts do, and in which also he corrupts himself he is governed by sense, and not by reason, and much less by faith, which he has not; one that indulges his sensual appetite, whose god is his belly, and minds nothing but earth and earthly things; and, though he has an immortal soul, has no more care of it, and concern about it, than a beast that has none; he lives like one, without fear or shame; and in some things acts below them, and at last dies, as they do, without any thought of, or regard unto, a future state:
neither doth a fool understand this; what is before said, or else what follows in the next verse, as Jarchi and others interpret it, concerning the end and event of the prosperity of the wicked; Arama interprets it of the Gentiles not knowing this law of the land, the sabbath, and so rejected it: a "fool" is the same with the "brutish" man, one that is so, not in things natural and civil, but in things moral, spiritual, and religious.