“stellio manibus nititur, et moratur in ædibus regis.”
“The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.”
“and the lizard can be caught in one’s hands, yet it is found in the palaces of kings.”
“You can catch a lizard with your hands, yet it is in kings’ palaces.”
“The lizard taketh hold with her hands, Yet is she in kings' palaces.”
The stellio. A kind of house lizard, marked with spots like stars, from whence it has its name. (Challoner) — Hebrew semamith. (Haydock) — It probably provides food against the stormy season, like ants. (Bochart) (Calmet) — Others understand “the spider,” (Kimchi) or “monkey.” (Vatable, &c.)
II. Those he specifies are, 1. The ants, minute animals and very weak, and yet they are very industrious in gathering proper food, and have a strange sagacity to do it in the summer, the proper time. This is so great a piece of wisdom that we may learn of them to be wise for futurity, ch. 6 6. When the ravening lions lack, and suffer hunger, the laborious ants have plenty, and know no want. 2. The conies, or, as some rather understand it, the Arabian mice, field mice, weak creatures, and very timorous, yet they have so much wisdom as to make their houses in the rocks, where they are well guarded, and their feebleness makes them take shelter in those natural fastnesses and fortifications. Sense of our own indigence and weakness should drive us to him that is a rock higher than we for shelter and support; there let us make our habitation. 3. The locusts; they are little also, and have no king, as the bees have, but they go forth all of them by bands, like an army in battle-array; and, observing such good order among themselves, it is not any inconvenience to them that they have no king. They are called God's great army (Joel 2 25); for, when he pleases, he musters, he marshals them, and wages war by them, as he did upon Egypt. They go forth all of them gathered together (so the margin); sense of weakness should engage us to keep together, that we may strengthen the hands of one another. 4. The spider, an insect, but as great an instance of industry in our houses as the ants are in the field. Spiders are very ingenious in weaving their webs with a fineness and exactness such as no art can pretend to come near: They take hold with their hands, and spin a fine thread out of their own bowels, with a great deal of art; and they are not only in poor men's cottages, but in kings' palaces, notwithstanding all the care that is there taken to destroy them. Providence wonderfully keeps up those kinds of creatures, not only which men provide not for, but which every man's hand is against and seeks the destruction of. Those that will mind their business, and take hold of it with their hands, shall be in kings' palaces; sooner or later, they will get preferment, and may go on with it, notwithstanding the difficulties and discouragements they meet with. If one well-spun web be swept away, it is but making another.