Verse 16
16. I loathe it מאסתי . Some (Conant and Renan) would render it “waste away,” “dissolve,” 2 Corinthians 5:1: its more ordinary meaning, to “loathe,” despise, is better here. Thus Delitzsch, etc.
I would not live alway Sir Thomas Browne felicitated himself that “though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.” Works, 2:389. Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist, thanked God that his soul was not tied to an immortal body. Compare the hymn of Muhlenberg on this text with the pessimism of Schopenhauer. See LIDDON, Elements of Religion, p. 132.
Let me alone Cease from me. As if he would say, Man’s life depends upon the presence, or the conscious putting forth, of power upon the part of God. If he withdraw that presence, or cease that activity, man perishes. There is no other way to account for life; that mysterious power which upholds the upright elaborated matter, a human body. How closely does the expression “cease from me” bring the living man into relationship to God. Comp. Psalms 104:29-30.
Vanity הבל , a breath; the name Abel bore.
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