The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him
What he dreads in his own mind will be his unhappy case, sooner
or later it comes upon him; his fear of distresses, calamities,
and judgments in this life, and of eternal wrath and vengeance
hereafter; for the most profligate and abandoned wretches, the
greatest atheists, who endeavour to work themselves up to a
disbelief of a God and a future state, have at times their
frights and fears about these things; and as are their fears of
God, so will his wrath be, ( Psalms 90:11
) . Jarchi illustrates this in the instance of the builders of
Babel, who were afraid of being scattered upon the face of the
earth, which thing feared came upon them through and for their
building of the tower; and so it sometimes is, that the very
thing which men fear comes upon them by the means which they take
to prevent it; so the Jews were afraid that if their people
believed in Jesus of Nazareth, the Romans would come and seize
their city and nation, and therefore endeavoured to persuade them
to reject him; for which rejection of him the thing they feared
came upon them; but the desire of the righteous shall be
granted;
or "he shall give" {s}; that is, God shall give it; who has it in
his hands or power to give it, as Jarchi's note is: what a
righteous man desires from right principles, and with right
views; what is for his own good and the glory of God; what he
asks in faith, and with submission to the divine will, and is
according to it, is sooner or later, in God's own time and way,
granted unto him: particularly his desires after righteousness;
after the righteousness of Christ, and to be found alone in that,
living and dying; after holiness of heart and life, that he might
be cleansed and kept from sin, and preserved to the coming of
Christ; after more grace, an increase of it, and fresh supplies
from Christ; after more communion with God and Christ, and
conformity to them; after glory and happiness, and a being with
them to all eternity. Some understand this of the righteous man's
desire upon the wicked; that his fear might come upon him, and
the glory of divine justice appear in his swift and sudden
destruction; as expressed in ( Proverbs
10:25 ) ; so Aben Ezra.