And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim [and] publish the free offerings: for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.
Ver. 5. And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven] Which I have flatly forbidden to be done, Leviticus 2:11. Neither leaven nor honey (which hath a leavening property in it) might be burnt in any offering made by fire; to show how God hateth hypocrisy; which, as leaven, soureth, swelleth, impureth, both us and our services. Out with it, therefore, 1 Corinthians 5:7. God indeed permitted his people to offer leavened bread with the peace offerings, Leviticus 7:13, ut ostenderetur, Deum ferre nostram infirmitatem, saith Alsted, to show that God beareth with our infirmities. But those leavened loaves were not to be burnt upon the altar; they were only for food to be eaten.
And proclaim and publish the free offerings] That you may not seem in anything to come short of my most forward worshippers; nor to be without your holy convocations solemnly proclaimed. Atque ita omnino in caepta idololatria strenue pergite, and so show yourselves thorough idolaters (Tarnov.); as the historian saith of our Richard III, that knowing it was no good policy to play the villain by half deal, he resolved to suffer never a rub to lie in his way that might hinder the true running of his heart.
For this liketh you] Heb. so ye love. Idolatry is marvellously pleasing to corrupt nature; as is to be seen in little ones delighting in babies. The whole world wondered after the beast, Revelation 13:3. The papacy with its pomp and pleasure is an alluring, tempting, bewitching religion. The great whore with her cup of fornications may easily boast, as that harlot in Aelian did, that she could soon get scholars from Socrates; not he from her. But what an odd or rather sad thing is it, that men should so like that which will be their bane? and that God should be put to complain, as here, and Jeremiah 5:31, "My people love to have it so; and what will ye do in the end thereof?" Polybius saith, that whereas man is counted the wisest of all creatures here below, to him he seemeth to be the most foolish; for other things love and seek their own preservation, Solus homo ab aevo ad aevum peccat fere in iisdem et punitur. Man only persisteth in sin, and is punished, as if he were ambitious for destruction.