I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I [am] God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city.
Ver. 9. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger] Heb. the heat of it. God's heart kindled, and whatsoever might cause repentance came together, and lay glowing, as it were, at his heart; and this cooled and even quenched the heat of his wrath (as the sunbeams when they shine full upon the fire), so that now he resolves not to execute the height of his heat, the extremity of his fury, for then the spirit should fail before him. Ephraim is God's dear son, his pleasant child; whom, when he hears bemoaning himself, as Jeremiah 30:18,20, he soon repents him of the evil, and cries,
- “ Satis hoc pro crimine magno
Paulum supplicii lenem sumpsisse parentem. ”
I will not return to destroy Ephraim ] I will not undo him twice over, or utterly ruin him; as those that have laid their enemy for dead, return to see whether he be dead outright; or as soldiers that have once pillaged a city return after a while to take all that little that was left before, and to set the rest on fire. God will not deal so hardly with Ephraim, though he might do it. Reprobates indeed shall have an evil, an only evil, Ezekiel 7:5 , without mixture of mercy; they must expect one plague upon another, as it fared with Pharaoh, till God had dashed the very breath out of his body. But for his elect people, Hath he smitten them, as he smote those that smote them? No, but in measure, in the branches only; he stayeth his rough wind, &c., Isaiah 27:7,8 . And as Croesus' dumb son burst out into, Kill not King Croesus (' Aνθρωπε, μη κτεινε τον χροισον . Herod.), so when enemies are ready to devour the Church, or Satan to swallow God's child up in despair, his heart's work; he can hold no longer, but cries, Save my child, save my Church. Why should "the spirit fail before me, and the souls which I have made? I have seen his ways and" (though bad enough) "I will heal him, I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners," Isaiah 57:16,18 .
For I am God, and not man ] Yea, such a God as the like is not, for pardoning iniquity, and passing by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage, Micah 7:18 . It is natural to him, Exodus 34:6 ; it is usual, Nehemiah 9:17 , there he is called a God of pardons, as, Isaiah 55:7 , he is said to multiply pardons. He hath commanded men to forgive an offending but repenting brother, seventy times seven times in a day, Matthew 18:22 . What then will himself do? For he is God Almighty, and not man. Man is an angry, vindictive, cruel creature; one man is a wolf, yea, a devil, to another; unsociable, implacable, unmerciful, as those were, Romans 1:31 . Beware of men, saith our Saviour to his disciples, Matthew 10:17 ; absurd and wicked men, 1 Thessalonians 3:2 ; barbarous and brutish, skilful to destroy, Ezekiel 21:31 . Yea, beware of good men when enraged. What strange deaths doth David (soon after his foul fall and not fully recovered) put the poor Ammonites to, 2 Samuel 12:31 . Further, men as they are unmerciful so they are unmindful of their promises. But God is not a man that he should lie, Numbers 23:18 . What he hath spoken with his mouth he will make good with his hand. The Eternity of Israel will not lie (as men will, Rom 3:4 ), nor repent (as men do, whatever he may seem to do; See Trapp on " Rom 3:3 " Rom 3:3); for he is not a man that he should repent, 1 Samuel 15:29. Men are mutable; the truest friend is ευμεταβλητον ζων, an easily changeable creature, as the heathen complained; all in changeable colours, as Tertullian saith of the peacock; as often changed as moved. Not so Almighty God. "I am Jehovah, I change not," Malachi 3:6. See Trapp On: Mal 3:6 " and remember still to retain high thoughts of God; not measuring him by our model; as to think him to be as merciful as we are, as powerful as our understanding can reach, &c. See Isaiah 55:8,9, and beg supernatural grace; without which it is impossible for a finite creature to believe the infinite attributes of Almighty God.
The Holy One in the midst of thee] Though Israel had deeply revolted, set up golden gods, and done wickedly as they could, so that there was no visible Church among them, yet God was the Holy One in the midst of them; seven thousand he had reserved that Elijah knew not of, 1 Kings 19:18, and a Church there was in Israel when at worst. Like as there was in medio Papatu, in the darkest midnight of damned Popery; and at this very day there are said to be thousands of professed Protestants, even in Italy itself; and in Seville, a chief city of Spain, there are thought to be no fewer than twenty thousand.
And I will not enter into the city] I will not invade the city as an enemy, to waste all with fire and sword, as once at Sodom. For what reason? there are holy ones in the midst of thee (so Rivet expoundeth it by an enallage of the number), a considerable company of righteous people, for whose sake I will spare thee, Jeremiah 5:1 .