And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Ver. 12. And if one prevail against him, &c.] Vis unita fortior. God bade Gideon to go down to the camp of the Midianites, and if he feared to go, then to take with him his servant Phurah. Jonathan will not go without his armourbearer - David without Abishai. 1Sa 26:6 Christ, when to begin his passion in the garden, took Peter, James, and John with him, for the benefit of their prayers and company, though they served him but sorrily. "My dove is but one." Son 6:9 "Jerusalem is a city compact together." Psa 122:3 The Church is "terrible as an army with banners"; Son 6:4 "the gates of hell cannot prevail against her." Mat 16:18 Unity hath victory, but division breeds dissolution, as it did once in this island when Caesar first entered it. Dum singuli pugnant universi vincuntur, saith Tacitus of the ancient Britons. The Turks pray daily that the differences among us Christians may be heightened, for that will soonest undo us, and one of their emperors, when his council dissuaded him from a war against the Germans, because of their multitude, said that he feared them not, because sooner would his fingers be all of one length than their princes all of one mind. a
And a threefold cord is not easily broken.] A proverbial confirmation well interpreted by Lyra: Quanto plures et boni in amicitia coniuncti sunt, tanto status eorum melioratur, - The more they are that unite, so they be good, the better it is with them. See 2 Samuel 10:9,12. We lose much of our strength in the loss of friends; our cable is as it were untwisted. Hence David so bemoans the loss of Jonathan, and made him an epitaph. 2Sa 1:17-27 Hence St Paul counted it a special mercy to him that Epaphroditus recovered. Php 1:27
a Camer., Medit. Hist., cen. ii. cap. 23. Rich., Axiom. Polit., p. 86.