According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.
Ver. 6. According to their pasture so were they filled] Saturity bred security; fulness, forgetfulness. This was a foul fault, and is much complained of, Deu 32:13-14 Psalms 78:10,11. God had brought them out of a place of great drought into large and fat pastures, a land flowing with milk and honey, where he filled their "hearts with food and gladness," Acts 14:17, where he fed them among the lilies, daily and daintily. But they, as if God had hired them to be wicked, basely abused his bounty to luxury, and having fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness, grew proud as Sodom, and out of measure sinful, Ezekiel 16:49; forgetting God and his will, themselves and their duties, and running out into all excess of riot, though they had been fairly warned and commanded to the contrary, Deuteronomy 8:10, &c. Their heart grew fat as grease, and became as a foul stomach, which the more you fill it the more you spill it; or like fed horses, they grew fierce and filthy, Jeremiah 5:7,8, there was no hoe with them, οποσον αν θρεψης μαλλον βλαψης (Hippoc.). See Ezekiel 34:16; Ezekiel 34:18; Ezekiel 34:20. While they were in the wilderness God knew them, yea, he knew their souls in adversity: they both knew God, and were known of him. But now, God neither knew them so much, nor they him; they lived not upon him now, as once in the wilderness; but being "filled, yea, filled," Galatians 3:1,2, (you have the word here twice together), to note how they fell upon those allowed delights, and even glutted themselves, gorged themselves; they flew upon them, as those in Saul's time did upon the spoil of the Philistines; they fed without fear, as those Pseudo-Christians in Jude, Judges 1:12; they gormandized, as those flesh mongers before the flood, more like beasts than men, as the Greek word signifieth, τρωγοντες, Luke 17:27. And hereupon
their hearts were exalted] Prosperity and plenty will easily blow up such a blab as pride, in the best hearts, if care be not taken to the contrary; as Agur knew, and therefore prayed, Give me a mediocrity, "lest I be full and deny," and proudly ask, "Who is the Lord?" Proverbs 30:9; and as Solomon felt, whose wealth did him more harm than his wisdom did him good, Ecclesiastes 2:1,26; and as Hezekiah experimented to his cost, Isaiah 39:1,8. Indeed of Jehoshaphat it is noted, 2 Chronicles 17:3, that he walked in the first ways of David his father (for the truth is, David's first ways were his best ways; neither was he ever so good and tender as when he was hunted as a partridge in the mountains); and of Vespasian it is reported that he was made the better man by being made emperor (Vespasianus unus accepto imperio melior rectus); but he was a rare bird and had scarce his fellow again. It is the property of prosperity to turn out the heart and ubi uber, ibi tuber. where there is pleny there is a tumor. See Psalms 73:3; Psalms 73:6 1 Timothy 6:17, they eat and are swelled, as being poisoned with pride; they are fatted, but it is for the slaughter.
Therefore have they forgotten me] Non tam theoretice quam practice, they remember there is a God, but they honour him not as God; they forget their engagements to him, and through the pride of their countenance, they seek not after him, Psalms 10:4, they consider not their distance, their dependence, &c. Now of all things God cannot abide to be forgotten, Isaiah 1:2,3, it is a sin that he can hardly pardon, Jeremiah 5:7. See Trapp on " Hos 8:14 "