They are swift as the waters; their portion is cursed in the earth: no one turns into the way of the vineyards.
Read Chapter 24
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
He is light That is, the adulterer, that he may not be perceived and discovered, steps as nimbly and as light as if he were walking upon the waters. Or the sense is: he is as light, that is, as swift and nimble as the running waters.
By the way of the vineyards. That is, by the way where he may meet with fruit and blessings. (Challoner)
The wicked are always inconstant. (Calmet) (Isaias lvii. 29.)
He deserves no temporal nor eternal happiness. If he were deprived of the former, he might perhaps endeavour to escape the torments of hell. (Haydock)
And so it is well said, “If the morning suddenly appears, it is to them even as the shadow of death.” For “the morning” is the mind of the righteous, which, leaving behind the darkness of sin, now breaks out into the light of eternity. As it is also said of the holy church, “Who is she that looks forth as the morning?” Therefore, in the same measure that every righteous person shining with the light of righteousness in this present life is reared to a height with honors, so the same measure of the darkness of death comes before the eyes of the wicked, in that they who remember that they have done bad things are in fear of being corrected. They always desire to be free in their iniquities, to live free from correction and to delight from sin. Its fatal mirth is itself appropriately described in the words that are directly introduced: “And they walk so in darkness, as in the light.” For with an evil mind they delight in deeds of wickedness. Through their sin they are day by day being dra...
79. From the plural number he returns to the singular because most frequently one person begins what is bad, and numbers by imitating him follow after, but the fault is primarily his, who to the bad men following after furnished examples of wickedness; and hence the sentence frequently returns to him who was the leader in sin. Now the surface of water is carried hither and thither by the breath of the air, and not being steadied with any fixedness is put in motion every where. And so the mind of the wicked man is ‘lighter than the surface of water,’ in that every breath of temptation that touches it, draws it on without any retarding of resistance. For if we imagine the unstable heart of any bad man, what do we discover but a surface of water set in the wind? For that man one while the breath of anger drives on, now the breath of pride, now the breath of lust, now the breath of envy, now the breath of falsehood forces along. And so he is ‘light above the surface of the water,’ wh...
