For now they shall say, We have no king, because we feared not the LORD; what then should a king do to us?
Ver. 3. For now they shall say, We have no king] sc. to do us good; he is no better to us now than a king of clouts: he cannot protect us, or deliver us out of the hand of our enemies. If we cry unto him, as she did, "Help, O king"; he must needs answer as there, "If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee?" 2 Kings 6:26,27. Vain is the help of man now that God sets against us. Feared him we have not, and now help us he will not. Est ergo interrogatio negantium et desperantium, saith Rivet. This is the question not of penitentiaries (as Lyra thinketh) but of such as despair, and deny that help can be had either from God, whom they have slighted, or from their king, who is over matched; as Asa was by the Ethiopians, when he came forth against them with an army of five hundred thousand, but was encountered by an army of a thousand thousand, the largest, I think, that we read of in the Book of God, 2 Chronicles 14:11, and was therefore fain to cry, "Help us, O Lord our God, for we rest in thee: and in thy name, not in our own strength, we go against this multitude."
Because we feared not the Lord] We trembled not at his word, as Hosea 9:17, and now it hath taken hold of us, Zechariah 1:6; See Trapp on " Zec 1:6 " By our profaneness we have enraged God against us; by our creature confidence we have made him our enemy; and now, all too late, we acknowledge our impiety, we bewail our folly; for what should a king do to us? what can he do for us, more than weep over us, as Xerxes did over his army? cry Alas Alas that great city Babylon, &c., as those kings, her paramours, Revelation 18:9,10, wish they had never reigned; as Adrian, Felix si non imperitassesset. Once the cry of this people was, Nay, but we will have a king, and they had him; but no such great joy of him. After that again, they would have a king of their own choosing, Jeroboam, I mean; and he proved a singular mischief to them, as did likewise all his successors. They doted upon a king, and put their trust in princes; but they soon found that in them there was no help, Psalms 146:3, that they could not rescue them out of the punishing hands of the King of kings, the living God.