Job 3:19
The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
The small and great are there,.... Both as to age, and with respect to bulk and strength of body, and also to estate and dignity; children and men, or those of low and high stature, or in a mean or more exalted state of life, as to riches and honour, these all come to the grave without any difference, and lie there without any distinction y "little and great are there all one"; as Mr. Broughton renders the words, see Revelation 20:12;
and the servant is free from his master; death dissolves all relations among men, and takes away the power that one has legally over another, as the husband over the wife, who at death is loosed from the law and power of her husband, Romans 7:2; and so parents over their children, and masters over their servants; there the master and the servant are together, without any superiority of the one to the other: the consideration of all the above things made death and the state of the dead in the grave appear to Job much more preferable than life in his present circumstances; and therefore, since it had not seized on him sooner, and as soon as he before had wished it had, he desires it might not be long before it came upon him, as in Job 3:20.
y "Grandia cum parvis Orcus metit". Horat. Ep. l. 2. ep. 2. ver. 178. "----Mista senum ac juvenum densantur funera". Horat. Carmin. l. 1. Ode. 28.