Ezekiel 16:42 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

So will I make my fury toward thee to rest— Though it be more grateful to God's excellent nature to awaken men with his bounty than with his chastisement, yet he can punish with as little noise as he can relieve: it is but withdrawing himself, giving men up to their own hearts' lust, letting them walk in their own counsels, and have all they desire to have; and they are insensibly as miserable as their most outrageous enemies desire to see them. The oldest and most obstinate sinners have the same desires, the same childish desires with little children: they wish to be let alone; and God gratifies them, and lets them alone: and woe unto them who are so left!—There is not a more terrible denunciation of judgment and vengeance in all the most heightened expressions of the prophets, than in that unconcerned determination and denunciation which the Lord here makes by Ezekiel, after all other experiments and expedients had failed. I will cause my fury towards thee to rest, &c. All his threats, all the strokes of his displeasure, all the mortification which the people had undergone by it, were not so intolerable as was this cessation of his fury, this departure of his jealousy, and this quietness and laying aside of his anger. While he had any kindness left for her, any good purposes towards her, he was jealous for Sion, with great jealousy and great fury; the kindness was for ever expired, when the fury and the jealousy were extinguished. We are to pray that he will rather deliver us up to our worst enemies, than give us up to ourselves, to our own heart's desire.