Psalms 49:12
But a man, despite his wealth, cannot endure; he is like the beasts that perish.
BSB
ASV
But man being in honor abideth not: He is like the beasts that perish.
KJV
Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.
Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not,.... Or Adam: and some understand this of the first man Adam, who was created and crowned with glory and honour; but it did not abide with him, nor he in that: so some Jewish writers (y) interpret it.
Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not. He is but a lodger for the hour, and does not stay a night: even when he dwells in marble halls his notice to quit is written out. Eminence is evermore in imminence of peril. The hero of the hour lasts but for an hour. Sceptres fall from the paralysed hands which once grasped them, and coronets slip away from skulls when the life is departed. He is like the beasts that perish.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Psalms 39:5You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing before You. Truly each man at his best exists as but a breath. Selah
leads to
Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.
Remember the briefness of my lifespan! For what futility You have created all men!
For all our days decline in Your fury; we finish our years with a sigh.
Lowborn men are but a vapor, the exalted but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor.
Yet when I considered all the works that my hands had accomplished and what I had toiled to achieve, I found everything to be futile, a pursuit of the wind; there was nothing to…
Through
Ecclesiastes 9:12For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a cruel net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them.
leads to
While people are saying, “Peace and security,” destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
But watch yourselves, or your hearts will be weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life—and that day will spring upon you suddenly like a snare.
Through
Psalms 82:7But like mortals you will die, and like rulers you will fall.”
leads to
This happened so that no other trees by the waters would become great in height and set their tops among the clouds, and no other well-watered trees would reach them in height. For they…