Job 8:14 Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's web. A similitude of great elegance and significance. We may observe a great analogy between the spider's web and that in a double respect. 1. In respect of the curious subtilty and the fine artificial composure of it. The spider in every web shows itself an artist: so the hypocrite spins his hope with a great deal of art, in a thin, fine thread. This and that good duty, this good thought, this opposing of some gross sin, are all interwoven together to the making up a covering for his hypocrisy. And as the spider draws all out of its own bowels, so the hypocrite weaves all his confidence out of his own inventions and imaginations. 2. It resembles it in respect of its weakness — it is too fine spun to be strong. After the spider has used all its art and labour in framing a web, yet how easily is it broken, how quickly is it swept down! So, after the hypocrite has wrought out a hope with much cost, art, and industry, it is yet but a weak, slender, pitiful thing. He does indeed by this get some name, and room amongst professors; he does, as it were, hang his hopes upon the beams of God's house. But when God shall come to cleanse, and, as it were, to sweep His sanctuary, such cobwebs are sure to be fetched down. Thus the hypocrite, like the spider, by all his artifice and labour, only disfigures God's house. A hypocrite in a church is like a cobweb in a palace — all that he is or does, serving only to annoy and misbecome the place and station that he would adorn. (R. South.) Parallel Verses KJV: Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's web.WEB: Whose confidence shall break apart, Whose trust is a spider's web. |
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