Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.
Ver. 15. Hate the evil, and love the good] God doth so; you must also, or else never look for his gracious presence with you: for idem velle, atque idem nolle, ea demure vera est Amicitia; True friends do both will and nill the same things. Minutius Felix saith, that he and his friend Octavius did so. The like did Basil and Nazianzen, Jonathan and David:
“ Corporibus geminis spiritus unus erat. ”
All God's people, as they partake of the Divine nature, so they live the life of God, Ephesians 4:18, and have the same both sympathies and antipathies (as I may so speak), abhorring that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good, Romans 12:9. God, they know, hateth evil worse than he hateth the devil; for he hateth the devil for sin's sake, and not sin for the devil's sake: so do they, looking upon sin as the most loathsome thing in the world, the very vomit of the devil, which (so far as they are regenerate) they do infinitely loathe to lick up. And for that which is good, whether things or persons, these they heartily love; not only with a love of desire, as Psalms 42:1,2, but also of complacency, as Psalms 73:25,26, herein resembling Almighty God; not as an image doth a man, in outward lineaments only, but as a son doth his father, in nature and disposition; being daily more and more conformed to the heavenly pattern, and transformeed into the same image from glory to glory, by his Spirit.
And establish judgment in the gate] Which hitherto ye have not done, Amos 5:10; Amos 5:12. Perform the duties of your own particular places; be good justicers as well as good men. It is said of Galba and of our Richard III, that they were bad men but good princes; but I hardly think it. Some good parts they might have, and some good acts they might do; but good princes they could not be, unless they did "hate the evil and love the good": but so doth not any bad man, for want of better principles. Make the tree good and the fruits will be good: and the contrary. Evil men may be some way useful to the public, and do good offices for the Church, and yet perish, because not in a good manner, upon a good motive, and for a good end. Revelation 12:16, the earth helped the woman; and yet, Revelation 16:1, the vials of God's wrath were poured out upon the earth. A good magistrate, as he sits in God's place (the judgment seat is called the holy place, Ecc 8:10), so he, loving what God loveth, and hating where God hateth, can boldly write over it that distich, that is said to be written over the tribunal in Zant, in letters of gold;
“ Hic locus odit, amat, punit, conservat, honorat,
Nequitiam, pacem, crimina, iura, bones. ”
It may be that the Lord ] Or, out of doubt, the Lord God of hosts will be gracious, &c. He is surely ready, were men but ripe and right for mercy; it sticks only on their part, and not on his; he waiteth to be gracious, Isaiah 30:18 . Oh unworthy we that cause him so to do. Currat poenitentia, ne praecurrat sententia (Chrysologus). They are but a remnant that shall have mercy; a few that shall find favour. Oh, labour to be of those few that shall enter into life, Luke 13:24 .