Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages [to put it] into a bag with holes.
Ver. 6. Ye have sown much and bring in little] This was visible to them; and they are called upon to consider it. The philosopher affirms that man is therefore the wisest of creatures, because he alone can compute and consider. And yet how little doth man respect this privilege, without which he were to be sorted with beasts or madmen! "God hearkened and heard, but no man spake advisedly, no man repented of his wickedness, saying, What have I done?" Jeremiah 8:6; no man humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, though God thrust him down, as it were, with a thump upon the back. Most men's minds are as ill set as their eyes are; neither of them look inwards. "Lord," saith the prophet, "when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see: but they shall see," &c., Isaiah 26:11. So, when God's rod call for reformation they will not hear it and who hath appointed it, but they shall hear, Job 33:15. Conscience, their domestic chaplain, shall ring this peal in their ears, "Consider your ways: Ye have sowed much but brought in little," &c. Omnia fuistis et nihil profuit, you have tried all ways to live, and it will not be, laboured all night, and taken nothing, "laboured in the very fire, and wearied yourselves for your vanity," Habakkuk 2:13; as those that seek after the philosopher's stone, the most they can look for is their labour for their pains. Either vanity or violence hath exhausted you, as Zechariah 8:10, and God's vengeance is visible enough in those secret issues and drains of expense at which your estates run out, because he puts not his holy finger on the hole in the bottom of the bag. For it is his blessing alone that maketh rich, Proverbs 10:22 "and except he build the house, they labour in vain that build it," Psalms 127:1. There is a curse upon unlawful practices, though men be never so industrious, as in Jehoiakim, Jer 22:13-19 And all their policies, without dependence upon him for direction and success, are but arena sine calce, sand without lime; they will not hold together when we have most need of them, but fall asunder, like untempered mortar. Hence the Psalmist assureth us that "promotion comes neither from the east, nor from the west, nor yet from the south," where the warm sunshine is, "but from the Lord: he putteth down one, and setteth up another," Psalms 75:6. So Hannah: "The Lord," saith she, "maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up," 1 Samuel 2:7. And albeit no man knows either love or hatred by all that is before them, because all things come alike to all, Ecclesiastes 9:1,2 (God maketh a scatter, as it were, of these outward commodities: good men gather them, bad men scramble for them), yet if he blow upon a man's estate, and by losses and crosses so beat him down with his own bare hand (as here in the text) that either he hath not to eat, or dare not eat his fill for fear of wanting another day, or if he do eat, yet the staff of bread being broken, and for want of God's concurrence, he eats and is not satisfied, &c., he hath but prisoners' pittance, which will neither keep him alive nor yet suffer him to die; he is to be very sensible of it, to consider his ways, and looking upon his penury (as a piece of the curse for neglect of God's service, Lev 26:14-20), to deprecate that last and worst of miseries, the judgment of pining away in their iniquities, Leviticus 26:39. This is worse than any scarcity, than any bulimy or doggish appetite, a disease common in times of famine. "The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want," Proverbs 14:25. As his belly prepareth deceit, Job 15:35, so it suffers deceit; imposturam faciunt et patiuntur, as the emperor said of them that sold glass for pearls. Fumos vendidit, fumo pereat, he that sells vapours let him pass away as a vapour. as another. Ye looked for much, and lo it came to little, as it followeth, Haggai 1:9; and why? but because they thought every little too much for God, and all well saved that was kept from him, Malachi 3:9,11. See Trapp on " Mal 3:9 " See Trapp on " Mal 3:10 " See Trapp on " Mal 3:11 " The Popish commentators upon this text call upon the people (if ever they mean to thrive) to keep holy days, to, hear masses, &c.; yea, some priests in Gerson's time publicly preached to the people that whosoever would hear a mass he should not fall blind on that day, nor be taken away by sudden death, nor want sufficient sustenance, Non erit caecus, nec subito morietur, nec carebit sufficienti sustentatione. This was more than they had good warrant to promise; and yet they are believed. Shall not we learn to live by faith, to trust "in the Lord and do good? so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed," Psalms 37:3. The wicked in the fulness of their sufficiency are in straits, Job 20:22. Contrarily, the godly, in the fulness of their straits are in a sufficiency; and this is the gain of godliness, 1 Timothy 6:6. Piety is never without a well-contenting sufficiency, it hath treasure that faileth not, bags that wax not old, Luke 12:33; and shall have hereafter riches without rust, wealth without want, store without sore, beauty without blemish, mirth without mixture.