The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man shall follow after him, as there are innumerable gone before him.
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George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Acceptable to the gravel of Cocytus. The Hebrew word, which St. Jerome has here rendered by the name Cocytus, (which the poets represent as a river in hell) signifies a valley or a torrent: and in this place, is taken for the low region of death, and hell: which willingly, as it were, receives the wicked at their death: who are ushered in by innumerable others that have gone before them; and are followed by multitudes above number. (Challoner)
Isaias (xiv. 9.) and Ezechiel (xxxii. 21.) describe the splendid reception in hell of the kings of Babylon and of Egypt, nearly in the same manner as Job does that of any sinner who has lived in prosperity, chap. xxxviii. 17. He gives life to the whole creation, in the true spirit of poetry. (Calmet)
The rich man is represented as tenderly embraced by his mother earth; (chap. i. 21.; Haydock) the very stones and turf press lightly upon him; as the ancients prayed, Sit tibi terra levis. Hebrew, "the stones or clods of the torrent (Calmet) shall ...
71. ‘Cocytus’ in the Greek tongue is the term for ‘lamentation,’ which is used to be taken for the lamentation of women, or any persons going weakly. Now the wise of this world being shut out from the light of truth, endeavoured by making search to hold a kind of shadows of truth. Hence they thought that the river Cocytus ran amongst the dead below, clearly denoting that they that commit deeds worthy of painful inflictions, run to an end into hell unto lamentation. But for ourselves let us make little of the shadow of carnal wisdom, who now hold the light relating to the truth, and let us see that in the utterance of the holy man ‘Cocytus’ means the lamentation of the weak sort. For it is written, Be of good courage, and let your heart be strengthened. [Ps. 31, 24] For they who refuse to be ‘strengthened’ in God, are going the way to lamentation through weakness of the mind. Now we are used to call by the name of pebbles the little stones of rivers, which the water in running aw...
