Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:
Ver. 11. Behold, the days come] Behold it; for it is a just wonder. The Lord created a new thing in the earth when Israel should want the word; Israel, to whom were committed the oracles of God; Israel, to whom God had spoken "by the mouth of his holy prophets, which had been since the world begun," in a sweet succession, Luke 1:70. See my True Treasure. "He made known his ways to Moses, his acts and monuments to the children of Israel," Psalms 103:7. Yet even these, who had the cornucopia of God's word, shall now suffer a famine of it; they shall have cause to cry out, "We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet; neither is there among us any that knoweth how long," Psalms 74:9. The word of God shall be precious, 1 Samuel 3:1, and they shall be hard put to it to come by it. Amaziah and his complices shall not need to pack away the prophets, as Amos 7:12, and to bid them go preach elsewhere; for God will, for a singular plague to an unworthy people, withdraw them; the law shall be no more, the prophets also shall find no vision from the Lord, Lamentations 2:9 .
That I will send a famine in the land] Heb. I will let it out (sc. out of my treasury of plagues, where I have it ready and desirous to be abroad), and turn it loose (εξαποστελω, Septung.), which before I kept up, as a wild beast, that it might not hurt nor destroy in all mine holy mountain; now it shall out among you, and the devil with it, Revelation 12:12, with hell at the heels of it.
Not a famine of bread] Though that is very grievous, Lamentations 1:11; Lamentations 1:19; Lamentations 2:12; Lamentations 2:20; Lamentations 4:4; Lamentations 4:9; Lamentations 5:9; and puts people to many hard straits and extremities (as were easier to instance), even to the eating of one another.
Nor a thirst for water] A torment more intolerable than the former. Lysimachus to save his life parted with his kingdom for a draught of water.
But of hearing the word of the Lord] Which is pabulum animae, the soul's proper food, such as she cannot live without; but when God sooth his oracles vilipended and lying under the table, it is just with him to call to the enemy to take away. It was so with those seven Churches of Asia among many others; as also with those of Africa, that vast continent (thrice as large as Europe), in all which there is not any region entirely possessed by Christians but the kingdom of Habassia: for as for the large region of Nubia, which had from the apostles' time (as it is thought) professed the Christian faith, it hath again over a hundred years since forsaken it, and embraced, instead of it, partly Mahometanism, and partly idolatry; and that by the most miserable occasion that might be, viz. famine of the word of God, for lack of ministers. For, as Alvarez hath recorded, at his being at the king of Habassia's court, there were ambassadors out of Nubia to entreat him for a supply of ministers to instruct their nation and to repair Christianity, gone to ruin among them; but they were rejected.