The stouthearted are plundered, they have slept their sleep: and none of the men of might can lift their hands.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
6. "There have been troubled all the unwise in heart" (ver. 5). ...How have they been troubled? When the Gospel is preached. And what is life eternal? And who is He that hath risen from the dead? The Athenians wondered, when the Apostle Paul spake of the resurrection of the dead, and thought that he spake but fables. But because he said that there was another life which neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it gone up into the heart of man, therefore the unwise in heart were troubled. But what hath befallen them? "They have slept their sleep, and all men of riches have found nothing in their hands." They have loved things present, and have gone to sleep in the midst of things present: and so these very present things have become to them delightful: just as he that seeth in a dream himself to have found treasure, is so long rich as he waketh not. The dream hath made him rich, waking hath made him poor. Sleep perchance hath held him slumbering on the earth, and lying on the hard...
Troubled. Hebrew, "plundered "or "stupified. "(Berthier)
The haughty and blasphemous Sennacherib, Rabsaces, were full of dismay, when the destroying angel slew 185,000 (Calmet) in the dead of the night. "What dire astonishment, ye men Of Media, sunk you to despair? "(Hymn on War, p. 52.; Haydock)
Sleep in death, Job xxvii. 19.
Of riches, with which they are possessed, as with a fever, (Seneca, ep. cxix.) and of which they dread, Isaias xxix. 8. (Calmet)
Yet the most opulent must die, and are foolish in clinging to riches, since they can carry nothing away. (Menochius)
Hands. Hebrew, "the men of the army have not found their hands. "(Berthier)
They could not use their arms against a spirit. (Haydock)
Christ has enlightened the mountains, his apostles; and fools despise their instructions, as the Athenians did St. Paul's, being too much attached to the world. (St. Augustine) (Berthier)
Though they may be troubled, they will not open their eyes to be convinced. Hence, they have no...
