Which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying, The land, unto which ye go to possess it, is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness.
Ver. 11. Which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets] Whose office it was to expound the law to us, and to apply it to our consciences. This, although they have done daily and duly, yet we have not been kept within the bounds of obedience, but have flown against the lights (as bats use to do), and sinned presumptuously. Thus he aggravateth their sin by every circumstance. And this is right confession, such as the schoolmen have set forth in this tetrastic.
Sit simplex, humilis confessio, pura, fidelis,
Atque frequens, nuda et discreta, lubens, verecunda,
Integra, cordata, et lachrymabilis, accelerata,
Fortis et accusans, et se punire parata.
Is an unclean land ] Because inhabited by an unclean people, who are acted and agitated by an unclean spirit, and do miserably moil themselves in the filthiness of lewdness, which defileth a man worse than any leprosy, than any out-house, Mark 7:23 . Mr Aseham (schoolmaster to Queen Elizabeth) did thank God that he was but nine days in Italy, wherein he saw, in that one city of Venice, more uncleanness and licentiousness than in London he ever heard of in nine years.
With the filthiness of the people of the lands ] Those Canaanites were very Borborites, shameless sinners before the Lord; who therefore rooted them out, and caused their land, when it could bear them no longer, to spue them out. Sin is filthiness ( ρυπαρια ) in the abstract. St James calleth it the stinking filth of a pestilent ulcer, and the superfluity or garbage of naughtiness, James 1:21 . It is no better than the devil's excrement; it sets his limbs in us, and draws his picture upon us; for malice is the devil's eye, oppression is his hand, hypocrisy is his cloven foot, &c. Great sins do greatly pollute.
Which have filled it from one end to another ] Hath overspread it as a deluge, overrun it, as the Jerusalem artichoke doth the ground wherein it is planted; turned it into the same nature with itself, as copperas, which will turn milk into ink; or leaven, which turneth a very passover into pollution. See Micah 1:5 , See Trapp on " Mic 1:5 "