And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
Ver. 6. And when thou hast accomplished them.] That is, art within forty years of accomplishing them.
Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days,] i.e., Years, beginning at the eighteenth year of Josiah; or, as others compute it, at his thirteenth year, and ending them in the eleventh of Zedekiah, which are the bounds of Jeremiah's prophecy. A very learned man yet living observeth, that God doth here set and mark out Judah's singular iniquity by a singular mark; for that they had forty years so pregnant instructions and admonitions by so eminent a prophet as Jeremiah, yet were they impenitent to their own destruction. And the like may well be said of Dr Ussher, that prophet of Ireland, who, upon the toleration of Popery there, preaching before the State at Dublin upon a special solemnity, made a full and bold application of this text unto them in these very words: From this year, said he - viz., A.D. 1601 - will I reckon the sin of Ireland; and dare say that those whom you embrace shall be your ruin, and you shall bear this iniquity. a And it happened accordingly; for, forty years after - viz., A.D. 1641 - began the rebellion and destruction of Ireland, done by those Papists and Popish priests then connived at.
a Dr Ussher's Funeral Sermon, by Dr Bern. 39.