Proverbs 28:15

[As] a roaring lion, and a ranging bear,.... Which are both terrible; the lion that roars for want of food, or when it is over its prey; and the hear, when it runs from place to place in quest of

As a roaring lion, and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over the poor people. A ranging bear - "ranging" to and fro with hunger.

The lion and bear are always cruel and greedy in their natures, and especially when they are hungry and want prey, in which case the lions roar, , and bears range about for it. So is a wicked ruler; instead of being a nursing father, and a faithful and tender shepherd, as he ought to be, he is a cruel and insatiable oppressor and devourer of them: Over the poor people; whom he particularly mentions, either to note his policy in oppressing them only who were unable to withstand him, or to revenge themselves of him; or to aggravate his sin in devouring them, whom the laws of God and common humanity bound him to relieve and protect; or to express the effect of his ill government, in making his people poor by his frauds and rapines.

Proverbs 28:15 [As] a roaring lion, and a ranging bear; [so is] a wicked ruler over the poor people.Ver. 15. As a roaring llon, and a ranging bear.] Regimen without righteousness turns into tyranny, and becomes no better than robbery by authority. Look how the lion frightens the poor beasts with his roaring, so that they have no power to stir, and then preys upon them with his teeth; and as the bear searches them out and tears them limb from limb: so deal tyrants with their poor subjects. "Her princes within her are roaring lions, her judges evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow." Such were those cannibals in David’ s days, that "eat up God’ s people as they eat bread"; such those miscreants in Micah, who did eat the flesh of God’ s people, and flayed their skin, that brake their bones, and chopped them in pieces as for the pot. Much like those American cannibals, who, when they take a prisoner, feed upon him alive, and by degrees, cutting off from his body now a meal and then a meal, which they roast before his eyes, searing up the wounded place with a firebrand to staunch the blood, to the unutterable aggravation of his horror and torment. Such a lion rampant was Nero; "I was delivered," saith St Paul, "out of the mouth of the lion." Tertullian calls him the dedicator of the condemnation of the Christians; whom he used as badly almost as the Spaniards at this day do the poor Indians, under pretence of converting them to the faith. Their own writers tell us that within forty years twenty-seven million people were killed, and that with such cruelties as never were heard of before. Let every good man bless himself out of the paws and jaws of these bloody Catholics, more savage and fierce than the wild beasts, as they soon show when armed with power, as were easy to instance. See the Babylonian cruelty graphically described, Jeremiah 51:34, and see whether it be not matched and over matched by mystical Babylon. The ranging lion and ravening bear is nothing to that man of sin that hath dyed all Christendom with the blood of God’ s saints, and dunged it with their carcases. This ostrich can digest any metal, especially money: witness his incredible exactions here in England, anciently called the Pope’ s ass. This cannibal is a pickerel in a pond, or shark in the sea, devours the poorer, as they the lesser fishes: not unlike that cruel prince mentioned by Melanchthon, who, to get money from his miserable subjects, used to send for them, and if they refused to furnish him with such sums of money as he demanded, he would first knock out one of their teeth, and then another, threatening to leave them none at all. Latrocinium cum privilegio.

(15) A ranging bear—i.e., wandering hungrily in great want of food. Over the poor people—i.e., a people too weak to resist him, over whom he can tyrannise without fear.

15. ranging] i.e. with a view to satisfy its hunger. The word is used in its secondary sense, hungry, Psalms 107:9. Comp. 1 Peter 5:8. λέωνπεινῶνκαὶλύκοςδιψῶν, LXX., ursus esuriens, Vulg.

The form of political wretchedness, when the poverty of the oppressed subjects not only embitters their sufferings, but exasperates the brutal ferocity of the ruler.

15. Roaring lion — The word represents the growling of a lion and other like beast when they have seized their prey, rather than their “roaring” on other occasions. This peculiar growl may be observed in the common cat.