Ver. 43. The stranger that is within thee, &c.— "Not only the pagan nations which live near them, but those strangers who live among them, shall rise upon their ruin, and grow great by their distress. What a threatening, for a nation so haughty as the Jews! What a desolation for them to become the vassals and slaves of those Gentiles whom they so much despise!"
REFLECTIONS.—They who will not be constrained by God's love, must perish under his displeasure. We have here a curse threatened, extensive and terrible enough to make the ears tingle of every one who hears it.
1. The cause of it is assigned: their contemptuous disregard of God, their wilful disobedience to his will, and especially their impious forsaking of him to follow idols. If we cast off God, no wonder he rejects us. In his judgments he will appear just: none suffer under his curse but those who rebel against his commands.
2. The curse itself is here denounced; vast, comprehensive, and inevitable. Wherever the sinner goes, closer than his shadow it pursues him. The fenced cities, or rural scene, afford no protection, can give no relief. Whatever he has, the curse is upon it: the very ground groans under it in barrenness; his possessions are forfeited by sin, and embittered to him; the poison of wrath mingles with every enjoyment; every work of his hand is unsuccessful; vexation and disappointment torment him without ceasing, and there is no prospect of their end. Woe, woe, woe to the sinful soul, against whom God comes forth thus armed with indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish. But lest general denunciations should not have the wished-for effect, he descends to particulars; each like a poisonous dart armed with a mortal sting, and every sinner set up as the mark on whom God would in particular empty his quiver. Disease shall seize upon their bodies, not as the rod of correction, but as the stroke of judgment. Loathsome ulcers (suitable punishment for the loathsomeness of sin) shall cover them from head to foot, and make them an abhorrence to others, and a burden to themselves.—Agonizing pain from the burning sores shall torture them, and no cure or palliative be found; and after days of anguish, the pining consumption, or raging fever, or mortal pestilence, shall finish in torment a life of misery. Famine shall aggravate their pain and sickness; the heavens shall drop down no dew, and the incrusted earth be incapable of vegetation: and if a leaf or blade of grass appear, God's terrible army, the locusts, shall be at hand to devour it: so that the seed sown shall not be reaped; whilst the worm shall mar their vineyards, and the fruit of the olive fail, shook down by stormy blasts, or withered by incessant drought. To add to their plagues, the sword of the enemy shall overtake them, irresistible in fury, merciless in vengeance; and so abhorred should they be, that no man passing by would bury their carcases, nor so much as frighten away the birds which preyed upon them. Infatuated withal, their counsels should be foolish, and madness of heart make them a terror to themselves; whilst every refuge they fled to, should fail them, and their allies distress them as much as their enemies. Their enjoyments shall now vanish as a dream; the wife they have espoused be violated; their substance consumed by the oppressor; their houses plundered; their cattle driven away for a spoil, and serving to feast their enemies, whilst themselves are famished with hunger. From free-born sons of Israel, who kept the nations at their feet, they should drag the galling chain of captivity heavily along; should behold their sons and daughters plucked from their embraces, doomed to servile labours, or devoted to more servile lusts. Idolatry, which had been their sin, should now become their punishment; and racks and fires compel them to serve those gods in a strange land, after whom they went a whoring in their own. The few that remained in Canaan, far from experiencing a happier estate, should there be insulted and tyrannized over by their lordly masters, and groan in vain under loads of taxes and debt, without pity, or hope of release from their oppressors; contemptible in every eye, the very heathens would take up a taunting proverb against them; whilst, overwhelmed with their miseries, they should stand silent in terror and astonishment at their own plagues, the end of which should be dark unfathomable despair, and the dreadful effect thereof raging and incurable madness.
Who can review this curse without trembling? Yet these things, to the sinner, are but the beginnings of sorrow. Hence learn, (1.) What a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God. (2.) That when we see spreading diseases, we should deprecate the wrath that is gone forth. (3.) That blindness of heart is among God's heaviest curses. (4.) That they who sell themselves to work iniquity, shall find their iniquity turned into their plague, and the idols they serve become their torment. (5.) That the most dreadful of all estates is despair. (6.) That this is often the cause of madness. (7.) That all these evils may trace their origin to departure from the living God.