Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision - In the presence of God’s extreme judgments, even deceivers are at length still; silenced at last by the common misery, if not by awe. The false prophets had promised peace, light, brightness, prosperity; the night of trouble, anguish, darkness, fear, shall Come upon them. So shall they no more dare to speak in the Name of God, while He was by His judgments speaking the contrary in a way which all must hear. They abused God’s gifts and long-suffering against Himself: they could misinterpret His long-suffering into favor, and they did it: their visions of the future were but the reflections of the present and its continuance; they thought that because God was enduring, He was indifferent, and they took His government out of His Hands, and said, that what He appeared to be now, He would ever be. They had no other light, no other foresight. When then the darkness of temporal calamity enveloped them, it shrouded in one common darkness of night all present brightness and all sight of the future.
Rup.: “After Caiaphas had in heart spoken falsehood and a prophecy of blood, although God overruled it to truth which he meant not, all grace of prophecy departed Matthew 11:13. The law and the prophets prophesied until John. “The Sun of Righteousness went down over them,” inwardly and outwardly, withdrawing the brightness of His Providence and the inward light of grace.” So Christ Himself forewarned; “Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you” John 12:35. And so it has remained ever since 2 Corinthians 3:15. The veil has been on their hearts. The light is in all the world, but they see it not; it arose to lighten the Gentiles, but they walk on still in darkness. As opposed to holiness, truth, knowledge, divine enlightening of the mind, bright gladness, contrariwise darkness is falsehood, sin, error, blindness of soul, ignorance of divine things, and sorrow. In all these ways, did the Sun go down “over them,” so that the darkness weighed heavily upon them. So too the inventors of heresies pretend to see and to enter into the mysteries of Christ, yet find darkness instead of light, lose even what they think they see, fail even of what truth they seem most to hold; and they shall be in night and darkness, being cast into outer darkness 1 Corinthians 8:12; sinning against the brethren, and wounding the weak conscience of those for whom Christ died.