Verse 6. — The light shall be darkened in his tabernacle. 10. The joy of the unrighteous quickly fails. Their joy is above them; the joy of the righteous is beneath. — If we very often take sadness for darkness, not without reason ought we to take joy for light. The light therefore is darkened in his tabernacle, because in his conscience, which he inhabits so ill, the joy which he had drawn from temporal things fails. Whence it is also fitly subjoined: Same verse. — And the lamp that is over him shall be extinguished. To speak, indeed, according to the usage of many, a lamp is a light in an earthen vessel, and the light in the earthen vessel is joy in the flesh.
The lamp therefore that is over him is extinguished, because when the recompense of his evils follows the ungodly man, in his mind the carnal joy is dissipated. But it is well said of this lamp, not that it is with him, but that it is over him, because earthly joys possess the mind of the unrighteous, and so absorb it in pleasures that they are over it, not with it. But the righteous, even when they have the prosperity of the present life, know how to press it beneath themselves, so that what they rejoice in among their goods, they may pass by with the counsel of gravity, and surpass by the governance of virtue. The lamp therefore of the wicked, which is over him, is extinguished, because his joy, which possessed him wholly in this life, fails the more quickly.