Observe two things:
1. That deep revolting, and deep afflictions, call for deep and solemn humiliation.
2. God's decrees and promises do not excuse us from duty and prayer, but include it and require it. God will be inquired of for those things which he hath purposed and promised to give his people, Ezekiel 36:37. And if it be objected by any, (as it is by Calovius,) that both God's threats and promises are absolute, and not hypothetical, as they will prove by Jeremiah 25:11,12 Jeremiah 29:10; it is answered that,
1. Though it be spoken peremptorily and absolutely, yet not without a tacit condition and secret reserve in God, Jonah 3:4.
2. God often speaks positively to put sinners in the more awe of his judgments, and to drive them to repentance, Jeremiah 18:7-10.
3. If God give a reason of his threatening, viz. because they have despised his word and abused his patience, 2 Chronicles 36:15,16 Lu 19:42-44; then the threat is absolute.
4. And if God add upon his threatenings such words as these, I will not hear you, pray not for this people, of which we have many instances, then it is peremptory.
5. When the threat and the judgment threatened are the fruit of God's decree, then it is irreversible; not else. Mind all these rules well in this case.