Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: [and] because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.
Ver. 12. Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel] Thus? how? Non nominat mala ut omnia timeant, saith Ribera. He tells them not how, that they may fear the worst; even all that is written and unwritten. It was the very policy of Julius Caesar never to extenuate or deny to his soldiers the danger of an enemy, but rather to raise up thoughts of valour by aggravating the contrary forces: and this way he did (not seldom) hyperbolically rhetoricate saith the story. Now the Lord need not do so; since his judgments are a great deep, neither can any man know the power of his anger, Psalms 90:11 : let a man fear it never so much, he is sure to feel it a great deal more if he once fall into his fingers. Is it nothing to drink the dregs of God's displeasure, when it is eternity unto the bottom? Is it nothing to launch into an infinite ocean of scalding lead, and to swim naked in it for ever? Oh, do anything rather than be damned; and as Lewis, King of France, cast the pope's bulls into the fire, saying, he had rather they should burn than himself fry in hell for obeying them; or as Mary, Queen of England, restored again all the ecclesiastical livings assumed to the crown, saying that she set more by the salvation of her own soul than she did by ten kingdoms; so "let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on him; and to our God, that he may multiply pardon," Isaiah 55:7 .
And because I will do this unto thee] Which (had I not wished thee well) I would never have told thee. But God loves to forewarn; and therefore threateneth evil that he may not inflict it (Ideo minatur ut non puniat): he would gladly be prevented by our humble addresses unto him, and by our entreaties of peace. Hear him else.
Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel] Turn and try; thou canst not likely lose thy labour; or if thou shouldest, yet thou hast lost many a worse. Let Ephraim but bemoan himself, and God will soon melt over him, Jeremiah 31:20. Let God's prodigals return to their merciful Father and he will meet them half-way, and receive them with all sweetness. Tantum velis, et Deus tibi praeoccurret. Do as those, Jeremiah 3:17. Alexander's Macedonians, being sensible of his displeasure, laid by their arms, put on their mourning attire, came trooping to his tent, where, for almost three days, they remained with loud cries and abundance of tears, testifying their remorse for offending him, beseeching his pardon, which at last they gained. And Guicciardin tells us, that Lewis XII of France (when he entered Genoa in his triumphant chariot with his sword naked), resolved to make a prey of their riches, and an example of many of the chief among them, and to leave the rest to his soldiers' mercies. But being met first by the chief, afterward by the multitude, making great lamentation for their folly, with abundance of tears and cries, his wrath was appeased toward them. The like we read of Henry VII, emperor, toward the citizens of Cremona; of our Edward III toward the inhabitants of Calais. And in Cade's conspiracy here, after that twenty-six of the chief rebels were executed, the multitude, naked in their shirts, met the king on Blackheath, humbly praying mercy; which they obtained.