They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carries away.
Read Chapter 21
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
56. When the wicked man is seen in power, when he is utterly without check or restraint in his acts of oppression and violence, by the imaginations of the weak he is accounted too well ballasted, and as rooted in this world. But when the sentence of the strict Judge cometh, ‘all the wicked shall be as chaff before the wind,’ because, if I may say so, all they are by the sudden blast of wrath lifted and carried to the fire, whom here once in their hasty judgments the tears of the distressed were as unable to move as a superincumbent mass of a stubborn weight. And to the hands of griping Judgment those are light, who by injustice were heavy upon their neighbours. And as ashes that the storm scattereth. Before the eyes of Almighty God, the life of the wicked man is ashes, in that though he appear green for a moment, yet is he already seen consumed by His judgment, seeing that he is set aside for everlasting burning. These ashes the storm disperses, in that, God shall come in state, even our God, and shall not keep silence. A fire shall devour before Him, and there shall be a mighty tempest round about Him. [Ps. 50, 3] For by the furiousness of this tempest the wicked are carried away from the sight of the eternal Judge. And those that here had set their mind firm with evil desire, will then appear but ‘chaff’ and ‘ashes,’ because those persons the storm seizes and transports to eternal punishment.
