(9) Children . . . wife.--It is one of the sadly peculiar features of this series of curses that the resentment of the imprecator cannot satisfy itself on the person of his foe, but fastens also on his innocent descendants. To invoke a speedy death does not content him; he must feast his anger with the thought of the fatherless children and desolate widow.

Verse 9. - Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Necessary consequences of his own condemnation to death.

109:6-20 The Lord Jesus may speak here as a Judge, denouncing sentence on some of his enemies, to warn others. When men reject the salvation of Christ, even their prayers are numbered among their sins. See what hurries some to shameful deaths, and brings the families and estates of others to ruin; makes them and theirs despicable and hateful, and brings poverty, shame, and misery upon their posterity: it is sin, that mischievous, destructive thing. And what will be the effect of the sentence, Go, ye cursed, upon the bodies and souls of the wicked! How it will affect the senses of the body, and the powers of the soul, with pain, anguish, horror, and despair! Think on these things, sinners, tremble and repent.Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. This sometimes is the case of good men, who leave widows and fatherless children, whom the Lord shows mercy to; being the Father of the fatherless, and the Judge of the widow, Psalm 68:5, but sometimes it is threatened and comes as a judgment, when the Lord shows no mercy and favour to them, Exodus 22:24. And this is the case here, which very probably was literally fulfilled in Judas, who might have a wife and children; since it looks as if the other apostles had, and certain it is that one of them had a wife, even Peter, in the times of Christ; see 1 Corinthians 9:5. And this was verified in the people of the Jews; whom the Lord divorced from himself, and wrote a "loammi" upon them, and left them as orphans and fatherless, Hosea 1:9. This will never be the case of Christ's people, or the Christian church, John 14:18, though it will be of the antichristian one, Revelation 18:7.