Clarke's Bible Commentary - Job 3:19

A contemplation of this should equally humble the great and the small.

The saying is trite, but it is true: ] Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, Regumque turres. HOR. Odar. lib. i., Od. iv., ver. 13.

"With equal pace impartial Fate Knocks at the palace as the cottage gate." Death is that state, "Where they an equal honour share Who buried or unburied are.

Where Agamemnon knows no more Than Irus he contemn'd before.

Where fair Achilles and Thersites lie, Equally naked, poor, and dry." And why do not the living lay these things to heart? There is a fine saying in Seneca ad Marciam, cap. 20, on this subject, which may serve as a comment on this place: MORS-servitutem invito domino remittit; haec captivorum catenas levat; haec e carcere eduxit, quos exire imperium impotens vetuerat. Haec est in quo nemo humilitatem suam sensit; haec quae nulli paruit; haec quae nihil quicquam alieno fecit arbitrio. Haec, ubi res communes fortuna male divisit, et aequo jure genitos alium alii donavit, exaequat omnia. "Death, in spite of the master, manumits the slave. It loosens the chains of the prisoners. It brings out of the dungeon those whom impotent authority had forbidden to go at large. This is the state in which none is sensible of his humiliation. Death obeys no man. It does nothing according to the will of another. It reduces, by a just law, to a state of equality, all who in their families and circumstances had unequal lots in life."

Matthew Henry Commentary

Original Hebrew