John Calvin Commentary Psalms 49:16

"Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, When the glory of his house is increased." — Psalms 49:16 (ASV)

Be not thou afraid. The Psalmist repeats, in the form of an exhortation, the same sentiment he had previously expressed: that the children of God have no reason to dread the wealth and power of their enemies or to envy their fleeting prosperity. As the best safeguard against despondency, he would have them direct their eyes habitually to the end of life.

The effect of such contemplation will be both to check any impatience we might be likely to feel under our short-lived miseries and to raise our minds in holy contempt above the boasted but deceptive grandeur of the wicked. So that this may not deceive our minds, the prophet directs our attention to the subject of death—that event which is imminent and which, as soon as it arrives, strips them of their false glory and consigns them to the tomb.

So much is implied in the words, He shall not carry away all these things when he dieth. However illustrious their lives may be in the eyes of their fellow human beings, this glory is necessarily bounded by the present world. The same truth is further asserted in the succeeding clause of the verse, His glory shall not descend after him. Infatuated men may strain every nerve, as if in defiance of the very laws of nature, to perpetuate their glory after death, but they can never escape the corruption and nakedness of the tomb; for, as the poet Juvenal says:

“Mors sola fatetur quantula sint hominum corpuscula,”—

“It is death which forces us to confess how worthless the bodies of men are.”