8 The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead.

      As always in death, so sometimes in life, the righteous are remarkably favoured and the wicked crossed. 1. Good people are helped out of the distresses which they thought themselves lost in, and their feet are set in a large room, Ps. lxvi. 12; xxxiv. 19. God has found out a way to deliver his people even when they have despaired and their enemies have triumphed, as if the wilderness had shut them in. 2. The wicked have fallen into the distresses which they thought themselves far from, nay, which they had been instrumental to bring the righteous into, so that they seem to come in their stead, as a ransom for the just. Mordecai is saved from the gallows, Daniel from the lion's den, and Peter from the prison; and their persecutors come in their stead. The Israelites are delivered out of the Red Sea and the Egyptians drowned in it. So precious are the saints in God's eye that he gives men for them, Isa. xliii. 3, 4.

      18 The wicked shall be a ransom for the righteous, and the transgressor for the upright.

      This intimates, 1. What should be done by the justice of men: The wicked, that are the troublers of a land, ought to be punished, for the preventing and turning away of those national judgments which otherwise will be inflicted and in which even the righteous are many times involved. Thus when Achan was stoned he was a ransom for the camp of righteous Israel; and the seven sons of Saul, when they were hanged, were a ransom for the kingdom of righteous David. 2. What is often done by the providence of God: The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked comes in his stead, and so seems as if he were a ransom for him, ch. xi. 8. God will rather leave many wicked people to be cut off than abandon his own people. I will give men for thee, Isa. xliii. 3, 4.