And Ephraim said, Yet I am become rich, I have found me out substance: [in] all my labours they shall find none iniquity in me that [were] sin.
Ver. 8. And Ephraim said, Yet I am become rich] Sed mihi plaudo domi. I have it howsoever though I hear ill for it; though the prophet inveigh against my covetousness, yet I am rich while he and his companions are poor and indigent.
Yea, I have found me out substance] An idol so the Vulgate renders it; and, indeed, every covetous man is an idolater, Ephesians 5:5, and performs both outward and inward service to his mammon of unrighteousness, to his golden calf. Substance he here creaks of, and rest to his soul (as the Seventy render it, ευρηκα αναψυχην εμαυτω), in opposition haply to the airy notions (as he accounted them) of the prophet's invectives against his covetous practices, and the terrors of his own conscience, which he endeavoured to corrupt and bribe. See, to like purpose, Isaiah 57:10, "Thou hast found the life of thy hand," that is, a livelihood by thy labour; "therefore thou wast not grieved": thy heart is hardened, and thou art insensible of thy sin guiltiness; thou settest the gain against the guilt, and then all is hail with thee. Felix scelus virtus vocatur; Prosperous wickedness is accounted virtue. Leah, because fruitful and successful, rejoiced in that whereof she had greater reason to repent. So did those idolaters, Jeremiah 44:11. Dionysius, after the spoil of an idol temple, finding the winds favourable in his navigation; Lo, said he, how the gods approve of sacrilege. It is no better that Ephraim here deals with the Almighty: Surely, saith he, if God disliked my courses so much as the prophet would make believe, I should not gather wealth as I do; but the world comes tumbling in upon me, therefore my ways are good before God. This is an ordinary paralogism, a whereby wicked worldlings deceive their own souls; hardening and heartening themselves in their sinful practices, because they outwardly prosper. But a painted face is no sign of a good complexion. Seneca could say, that it is the greatest unhappiness to prosper in evil.
In all my labours] So he calleth his fraudulent and violent practices, as making the best of an ill matter.
They shall find no iniquity in me] Though they search as narrowly as Laban did into Jacob's stuff; what can they find, or prove by me? Am I not able either to hide mine ill dealings, or to defend them? Can they take the advantage of the law against me? Why, then, should I be thus condemned and cried out of as I am? thus "The rich man is wise in his own conceit," Proverbs 28:11, and covetousness is never without its cloak, 1 Thessalonians 2:5, which yet is too short to cover it from God, who is not mocked with masks, or fed with feigned words, whereof the covetous caitiff is full, 2 Peter 2:3. Witness Ephraim here, with his pretences of innocence: "In all my labours," that is, mine ill gotten goods (the fruit of my hard and honest labour, saith he), "they shall find none iniquity," no crimen stellionatus, no craft or cruelty.
That were sin] Piaculum esset, that were a foul business; far be it from me to stain my trading or burden my conscience with any such misdeed. I would you should know I am as shy of sin as another: neither would I be taken tripping for any good. Thus men, notoriously guilty, may yet give good words, yea, largely profess what they are guilty of to be an abominable thing; and this is a sure sign of a profane and cauterized conscience, of a heart that being first turned into earth and mud, doth afterwards freeze and congeal into steel and adamant.
a A piece of false or erroneous reasoning; an illogical argument; a faulty syllogism; a fallacy, esp. (as distinct from sophism) one of which the reasoner himself is unconscious. ŒD