I have overthrown [some] of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
Ver. 11. I have overthrown some of you] Some and not all: thus, in the midst of judgment he remembered mercy, he did not stir up all his wrath, Psalms 78:38, he let fall some drops, but would not shed the whole shower of it; for he remembered that they were but flesh. Some he hanged up in gibbets, as it were, for example to the rest: as St Jude saith he dealt by Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, thrown forth for an instance of Divine vengeance to all succeeding ages, Judges 1:7 (προκεινται); and as Herodotus telleth us, that the sparks and ashes of burnt Troy served for a lasting monument of God's great displeaure against great sinners. See the like threatened to Babylon, Isaiah 13:19,20 .
As God overthrew Sodem] As Jehovah from Jehovah rained hell out of heaven upon them, Genesis 19:24, that is, God the Son from God the Father: and so Eusebius observeth that the Father here saith of the Son, that he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah (De Praepar. Evang. 1. 5, c. 23. Vide Socrat. Hist. Eccles. l. 2. c. 30.): "he condemned them with an overthrow," 2 Peter 2:6, he overthrew them and repented not, Jeremiah 20:16, he overthrew them in a moment, and no hand stayed on them, Lamentations 4:6. And yet worse shall be the condition of those that despise the grace of the gospel, which is the great sin of these last times, Matthew 11:24; yea, the devils will keep holy-day, as it were, in hell, in respect of such sinners against their own souls.
And ye were as a firebrand] Ambustus et fumigans titio, smutchy and smoky, and scarcely escaping with the skin of your teeth, Job 19:20, as Lot out of Sodom, as the man of Benjamin out of the army, 1 Samuel 2:12, as the young man that fled naked away at Christ's attachment, Mark 14:52, or as Hunniades narrowly escaping with his life from the battle of Varna; where he had like to have fallen with that perjured Popish king, as good Jehoshaphat had for joining with Ahab. It is as if God should say: There are not many of you that are left, and have your lives for a prey; howbeit they are ill bestowed upon you, for any good use you have made of my forbearance. "Let favour be shown to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness," Isaiah 26:10; and if thou deliver him once, yet thou must do it again, and when all is done that can be done. "A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment," Proverbs 19:19; and so (to be sure of it) shall a man of great stomach and stubbornness, that refuseth to return, as these of whom the fifth time it is here complained.
And yet ye have not returned, &c.] O prorsus obstinati! saith Tarnovius here: Prorsus indurati et contumaces, saith Mercer. "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, do ye thus always resist the Holy Ghost?" Acts 7:51 : will ye needs be like horse and mule, uncounsellable, untractable? will ye, after conviction, needs run away with the bit in your mouths and take your swing in sin. If so resolved, yet stay, saith the Psalmist, and take this along with you, "Many sorrows shall be to the wicked," Psalms 32:10; your preservation from one evil shall be but a reservation to seven worse, Leviticus 26:21, as it fared with Pharaoh, Sennacherib, and others; God will surely subdue or subvert you.