Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ask now the priests [concerning] the law, saying,
Ver. 11. Ask now the priest concerning the law] For who should know the law better than the priests? And who so fit to resolve cases of conscience as they? It was their office, Lev 10:10-11 Deu 33:10 Malachi 2:7. See the note there. It was an evil time with God's people when he was put to complain, "Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I sent?" Isaiah 42:19. When the prophet was a fool, the spiritual man was mad for the multitude of their iniquity, and the great hatred, Hosea 9:7. Varro upbraided the Roman priests of old with their gross ignorance of many things in point of their own rites and religions; and Cicero brake a jest upon Gaius Popilius, an ignorant lawyer, at Rome. For when Popilius, being called for a witness to some controversy, answered, Nihil se scire, that he knew nothing, Cicero answered, by way of jeer, Paras fortasse te de iure interrogari, You mean (perhaps) that you know nothing in the law, which yet you profess to have skill in. What a shame was it for the Pharisees, who took upon them to be guides of the blind, teachers of babes, &c., Romans 2:19,20, to be found "blind leaders of the blind!" Mat 15:14 So is it for divines, being asked concerning the law, or will of God, in such and such cases, not to be able to answer discreetly (νουνεχως), and intelligently, as he did Mark 12:34, as an egregie cordatus homo? distinguished wise man. But so bungler-like, and so far from the purpose, that it may well be seen that "desiring to be teachers of the law, they understand neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm," 1 Timothy 1:7. How like the motion of a puppet, the language of a parrot, is the discourse of such unlearned or uninterested casuists! Every minister of God's making can truly say, "The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know to time a word to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned," Isaiah 10:4. See 1Co 12:8 Tit 1:9 Ephesians 3:4; Ephesians 3:7 1 Corinthians 2:13 .