And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
Ver. 6. And I have also given you cleanness of teeth] So that you need not spend time in picking them, as those that are fully fed; for I have cut you short enough, and held you to hard allowance; as those that would tame wild creatures keep them empty and waking; but you have been, and so continue, untamed and untractable, incorrigibly flagitious, uncapable of repentance. Your diseases are complicated, yea, they are so ingrained, that they are not easily stirred, much less destroyed by any potion I have yet given you. In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction, Jeremiah 2:30 .
In all your cities] One as well as other, lest you should say as those Philistines, It was a chance, 1 Samuel 6:9 : and as the Rabbis tell us, that the idolatrous priests told Jeroboam that the drying up of his hand happened merely by accident.
And want of bread in all your places] Thus the Scripture often interpreteth itself, and is ever its own best gloss. Some think that by "want of bread" here, is meant dearth of grain; as by cleanness of teeth, scarcity of flesh; and that by "all your places" we are to understand all your houses. This occured in the times of Elias and Elisha, 1Ki 17:1 2 Kings 6:25; 2 Kings 8:1; and God would not have it to be forgotten, but is justly angry that they remained so irreformable. That dearth in Elias' days lasted over three years; and might likely be as extreme as that here in England (about the year 700) of three years' continuance; and so violent it was, that not only many died daily for hunger, but great numbers, joining hand in hand, 40 or 50 in a company, threw themselves headlong into the sea. A like three years' famine also we read to have been in Bohemia and Polonia, A.D. 1312, so great, that children devoured their parents, and parents their children; some fed upon the dead carcases that hanged in gibbets. Wolves also were so famished, that they fell upon all they met, and fed upon them.
Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord] Ye have lost the fruit of your afflictions (perdidistis fructum afflictionis. Aug.), and all mine hammers hitherto have but beatten cold iron. The bellows are burnt, the lead is consumed, the founder melteth it in vain, for the wicked are not plucked away, sc. from their wickedness; his dross is yet with him, his great scum still in him, Ezekiel 24:6; Ezekiel 24:12,13, it is woven into the very texture of his heart, and cannot be separated. Reprobate silver shall men call him, because he returneth not to God that smiteth him, Jeremiah 6:29,30 Isaiah 9:12,13 .