I will this once cause them to know— Instead of this once, Houbigant reads by this turn, or change; "that is," says he, "after the Jews are rendered unworthy to be called the people of God:" for the Gentiles were then to be called to the faith of the Gospel, when the Jews were rejected. To know my hand and my might, signifies, "my vengeance and power, shewn in the destruction of their idolatry."
REFLECTIONS.—1st, Example is often more effectual than precept. He who was sent to warn others of the destruction of the land, must by his conduct shew his assured conviction of the truth of what he preached. They who are urging men to look to the eternal world, must shew their own hearts fixed upon it, by their holy self-denial and deadness to every thing on earth. Three things are forbidden the prophet, and the reasons for these prohibitions subjoined.
1. He must not marry, nor have a family. Not as if a life of celibacy were, in an abstract view, either enjoined or desirable; but because of the distress coming upon the land, which would make a family a burden, and occasion the bitterest anguish from the grievous deaths of those so near and dear to him. For God was about to pour down his judgments; to send forth death in all its terrors, armed with the famine, pestilence, and sword; and to cover the earth with carcases so numerous, that there should not be graves to receive them, nor any to lament over or to bury them.
2. He must not go to the house of mourning. With friendly sympathy he had, no doubt, been wont to weep with those that wept; but now he must abstain, and shew no usual expression of grief for his nearest friend or relation, because either the dead were removed from the evils to come, or rather as a sign to the living of the greatness of the approaching calamities; when death would make such terrible devastation, that even the great should lie unburied on the ground, and none be left to shew the last kind office to the corpse, or to mourn over it. God having removed his peace from the land, a consumption utter and universal is decreed against it.
3. He must not go to the house of feasting. He had been accustomed, no doubt, to join with his friends when they made an entertainment, and innocently to partake of their repast; but this was now unseasonable; and when he foresaw the terrible wrath of God impending, he wanted by his own conduct to awaken their concern. The voice of mirth and bridal songs were about to cease, and no voice to be heard but the shrieks of the miserable and the groans of the dying.
2nd, We have,
1. The insolent and unhumbled challenge which this hardened people should make, beholding his conduct and hearing his warnings. They would ask, Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? as if they had never given him any provocation: or, What is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God? They pretend a claim to God, as their God, and would deny the charge which the prophet continued to lay against them; so blind, hardened, and obstinate, are sinners in the error of their ways; and, instead of justifying God in his judgments, quarrel with his visitations as unjust or severe.
2. The prophet has his answer given him, and enough to silence their presumption. Their fathers' iniquities, backslidings, disobedience, and idolatries, were great and shameful; but their own far exceeded: instead of being warned by the judgment which they suffered, or being led to repentance by God's patience, they had grown worse and worse, filling up what was lacking of the wickedness of their predecessors; more perversely set on their own evil ways, and more resolutely hardened against all the rebukes of God's prophets; therefore no wonder that, as the just punishment of their iniquities, God would cast them out of that good land which they had defiled, send them far off into a miserable captivity, make that idolatry which had been their sin their grievous punishment, and withdraw from them every token of favour which might alleviate their miseries.
3rdly, In judgment God still remembers mercy.
1. He gives them hopes that a glorious day of deliverance should come, so much greater than that of their redemption from Egypt, that in a measure it should obliterate the mention of it. And this was primarily fulfilled in the recovery of the Jews from Babylon, and the countries of the north, whither they had been carried away captives, and may have reference to that more glorious expected event, when the Lord shall call them into his church from their present dispersion.
2. Before he shewed them this favour, he would severely visit their iniquities. As fishes taken in an evil net, and beasts in the hunter's snare, so would God give them up to the Chaldeans to be taken and destroyed, who should pursue them into all their lurking-places, and drag them into captivity. Their evil ways, however secret, were not hid from God's eye: he marked their impious rites and abominable idolatries, the carcases of their detestable things, offered to their idols, so many, and so universally practised through the land, that they filled God's inheritance with their horrid profanations. For this, therefore, he threatens to recompense their sin double; not beyond what it deserved, but double above all other visitations that he had brought upon them, or much more than they feared or apprehended. Note; (1.) No darkness can hide the sinner from God's eye. (2.) Flight is in vain when he pursues: no cave, no mountain can then conceal the guilty from his judgment.
3. The prophet is comforted, not only in the prospect that the punishment of his people, however severe, would have an end, but also with the foresight of the conversion of the Gentiles; O Lord, my strength and my fortress, who had hitherto supported him amidst all his infirmities, and against all his enemies; and my refuge in the day of affliction, who would preserve him amidst all the approaching evils: the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth; either when the Jews returned from Babylon, and many proselytes came up with them; or when the Gospel was preached, and the Gentiles became obedient to the faith, renouncing the idols of their fathers, convinced of their vanity and unprofitableness, and astonished at their absurdity, that any could think those to be gods which were the workmanship of their own hands, wood or stone. But now God will cause them to know better, making them, by his divine grace, acquainted with his own glorious perfections as the only living Jehovah, with the Gospel of his dear Son, and the way of life and salvation attainable through the Redeemer.
Some choose rather to understand all this of the Jews, called Gentiles, because of their imitation of their sins, and now quitting with shame their idolatries, and returning to the one living and true God. Note; (1.) They who make God their refuge shall find support under the heaviest afflictions. (2.) When the sinner, convinced and ashamed of his folly, begins bitterly to reflect upon himself, then God will again restore him to his favour, and make him know once more the wonders of his grace.