Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud - There is often a fair show of prosperity, out of God; but it is short-lived. “The third generation,” says the pagan proverb, “never enjoys the ill-gotten gain.” The highest prosperity of an ungodly state is often the next to its fall. Israel never so flourished, as under Jeroboam II. Bright and glistening with light is “the early dew;” in an hour it is gone, as if it had never been. Glowing and gilded by the sun is “the morning cloud;” while you admire its beauty, its hues have vanished. “The chaff” lay in one heap “on the floor” with the wheat. Its owner casts the mingled chaff and wheat against the strong wind; in a moment, it is “driven by the wind out of the floor.” While every gram falls to the ground, the chaff, light, dry, worthless, unsubstantial, is hurried along, unresisting, the sport of the viewless wind, and itself is soon seen no more. The “smoke,” one, seemingly solid, full, lofty, column, ascendeth, swelleth, welleth, vanisheth . In form, it is as solid, when about to be dispersed and seen no more, as when it first issued “out of the chimney.” : “It is raised aloft, and by that very uplifting swells into a vast globe; but the larger that globe is, the emptier, for from that unsolid, unbased, inflated greatness it vanisheth in air, so that its very greatness injures it. For the more it is uplifted, extended, diffused on all sides into a larger compass, so much the poorer it becometh, and faileth, and disappeareth.” Such was the prosperity of Ephraim, a mere show, to vanish forever. In the image of “the chaff,” the prophet substitutes the “whirlwind” for the wind by which the Easterns used to winnow, in order to picture the violence with which they should be whirled away from their own land.
While these four emblems, in common, picture what is fleeting, two, the “early dew” and the “morning cloud,” are emblems of what is in itself good, but passing ; the two others, the chaff and the smoke, are emblems of what is worthless. The dew and the cloud were temporary mercies on the part of God which should cease from them, “good in themselves, but to their evil, soon to pass away.” If the dew have not, in its brief space, refreshed the vegetation, no trace of it is left. It gives way to the burning sun. If grace have not done its work in the soul, its day is gone. Such dew were the many prophets vouchsafed to Israel; such was Hosea himself, most brilliant, but soon to pass away. The chaff was the people itself, to be carried out of the Lord’s land; the smoke, “its pride and its errors, whose disappearance was to leave the air pure for the household of God.” : “So it is written; ‘As the smoke is driven away, so shalt thou drive’ them ‘away; as wax melteth before the fire, so shall the ungodly perish before the presence of God’ Psalms 68:2; and in Proverbs; ‘As the whirlwind passeth’ Proverbs 10:25, so is ‘the wicked no’ more; ‘but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.’ Who although they live and flourish, as to the life of the body; yet spiritually they die, yea, and are brought to nothing, for by sin man became a nothing. Virtue makes man upright and stable; vice, empty and unstable. Whence Isaiah says, ‘the wicked are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest’ Isaiah 57:20; and Job; ‘If iniquity be in thy hand, put it far away; then shalt thou be steadfast.’ Job 11:14-15.”