The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:
Ver. 28. With madness and blindness.] Spiritual, especially; such as befell the Jews of old, Romans 11:18 2Co 3:14 the chief priests and scribes especially, who, being questioned by Herod about the King of the Jews, Mat 2:4-5 could answer directly out of the Scriptures, and give such signs of the Messiah as did evidently agree to Jesus Christ. And yet because they discerned not their day of grace, but winked hard with their eyes, and shut the windows, lest the light should come in, they were by a special judgment so besotted and infatuated, that when God shows them the man, to whom their own signs agree, they cannot allow of him, nor will yield to be saved by him upon any terms. How shamefully they were deluded by Barchocab, is notoriously known. And after this, when they saw Mohammed arising in such power, they were straight ready to cry him up for their Messiah. But when they saw him eat of a camel, they were as blank as when they saw the hoped issue of their late Jewish virgin turned to a daughter. They are generally light, aerial, and fanatical brains, apt to work themselves into the fool's paradise of a sublime dotage. Howbeit God, we trust, will at length cure them of this spiritual ophthalmy disordered mental vision and frenzy. Their dispersion for this one thousand six hundred years is such, as that one of their own Rabbins concludes from thence that their Messiah must needs be come, and they must needs suffer so much for killing him. "Oh that the salvation of Israel were once come out of Zion! When the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, then shall Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad." Psa 14:7