Psalm 49:14 Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning… The whole psalm pours contempt on wealth, pursues it with the most incisive and biting irony. Its pictures of the man who devotes his whole life to amassing a treasure of which, when he takes the inevitable journey of death, he cannot carry so much as a single shekel with him; of the man who calls his lands after his own name, as if to cheat death itself, and to secure a bastard immortality, perpetuating his name on earth while he himself perishes in Hades; and of the man who thinks it possible to bribe death, and buy the power "to live on for ever," are quick with a scorn beyond that of satire. They tremble with a fervid moral indignation and contempt for the folly which can mistake wealth for man's chief good. Wealth is not man's chief good; it is wrong, it is wicked, it is a profound and fatal violation of the Divine law and order, to make it the governing and supreme aim of life. For all who do that, even though they violate no human law, end even though they acquire but little of the wealth they seek, the psalmist cherishes a pure, unutterable scorn. To him they are losing the very form and status of men. They are sinking to the level of "beasts that perish"; i.e. they are living as though they had no life but this, as if death were not, as if there were no light beyond the grave. But there is one picture of them, still hidden from us by a thin veil of words, in which his scorn for these brutish people culminates in a figure as terrible, perhaps, as any in the whole range of Scripture. In verse 14 he depicts them as the "sheep of death." The opening clauses of the verses, rightly translated, run, "Like sheep they are gathered to Hades; death is their Shepherd" (He who feeds or finds pasture for them; not he who feeds on them). What the psalmist means is that men who make wealth their ruling aim are not simply like the beasts that perish, but are in very deed the sheep of death; that it is death whom they have chosen for their shepherd, instead of God, the Author and Source of life; that it is Death who finds pasture for them while they live, and who, when they die, drives them to his fold in the unseen world. Think of it! The sheep of death — men following that grim shadow to the darkness in which it dwells! And these the men who "bless their souls" (ver 18), whom the world praises because they have done good to themselves, whose "sayings" the world quotes and approves after they have gone to their long, dark home! Was there ever a more grisly and dreadful metaphor? And yet is it one whir too dreadful? Is it not true that every man who trusts in riches, or longs for them as his chief good, is pursuing death, not life; has taken for his shepherd "the dark Shadow feared of man," although he knows it not? Can we not see in that very trust or longing the very brand of death, the private and distinctive mark of that grim Shepherd? (The Expositor.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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