An exposition with practical observations continued upon the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters…

Secondly, the word signifies affliction or sorrow, calamity or misery, because sin is the cause of affliction, the mother of sorrow: And therefore by a Metonymy of the effect for the cause (which is frequent in Scripture) The same word notes both sin and sorrow; The mother and the daughter are called by the same name. We translate by the effect, Surely, affliction cometh not out of the dust; Many by the cause, Surely, iniquity comes not out of the dust. And for the full understanding of the text, we must take in both; where the effect only is mentioned, the cause is supposed, ⟨p. 218⟩Affliction springs not out of the dust, because sin springs not out of the dust.

Secondly, the word signifies affliction or sorrow, calamity or misery, because sinne is the cause of affliction, the mother of sorrow: And therefore by a Metonimie of the effect for the cause (which is frequent in Scripture) The same word notes both sinne and sorrow; The mother and the daughter are called by the same name. We translate by the effect, Surely, affliction commeth not out of the dust; Many by the cause, Surely, iniquity comes not out of the dust. And for the full understanding of the text, we must take in both; where the effect only is mentioned, the cause is supposed, ⟨p. 218⟩Affliction springs not out of the dust, because sin springs not out of the dust.

Now this form of speaking (Iniquity or affliction springs or cometh not forth of the dust) is proverbial: and no doubt was ¹well known and often used in those times. When they would remove chance or fortune (as we say) or deny any event to be without a certain directive power, They spake in this language, This came not from the ground; thereupon the vulgar translates it so in terms, ^*There is nothing in the world without cause, alluding (it is probable) to the Proverb. Hence a man obscurely borne, whose parents and original are unknown, is called