Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.
Ver. 6. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns] i.e. with difficulties and distresses. So God had fenced up Job's way that he could not pass, Job 19:8, he had thrown the cross in his way, to stop him in his career. And so he had hedged the Church about, that she could not get out, Lamentations 3:7, he had enclosed her ways with hewn stone, and made her paths crooked, Lamentations 3:9. A great mercy if well considered, though grievous to the flesh, that loveth not to be cooped or kept within compass. Man is fitly compared to a wild ass's colt used to the wilderness, snuffing up the wind at her pleasure, rude and unruly, untamed and untractable, Jer 2:24 Job 11:12. To be kept by hedges and fences within a pasture, seems to such no small punishment: neither count they anything liberty but licentiousness; or a merry life, unless they may have the devil their playfellow: but the devil plays at no small games: capite blanditur, ventre oblectat, cauda ligat: he plays indiscriminately, he lies in wait for the precious life, as that harlot, Proverbs 6:26; nothing less will content him. In great wisdom, therefore, and no less mercy to men's souls, doth God restrain, and bind them by afflictions that they may not run wild as they would nor feed upon the devil's commons, which would fatten them indeed, but for the slaughter. This made Job prize affliction as a special favour, Job 7:18. Jeremiah prayeth, "Correct me, O Lord," Jeremiah 10:24; and Luther to like purpose, Feri Domine, feri clementer: Strike, Lord, strike, it shall be a mercy. And King Alfred prayed God always to send him some sickness, whereby his body might be tamed, and he the better affectioned to Godward. It is observed by one of our chroniclers, that affliction so held in the Saxon kings in the Danish wars, as having little outlets or leisure for ease and luxury, they were made the more pious, just, and careful in their government: otherwise it had been impossible so to have held out. Sure it is that if God did not hedge us in (as by his hedge of protection, Isaiah 5:5, so) by his hedge of affliction, as here, no reason would rule us, no cords of kindness would contain us within the bounds of obedience. David himself, before he "was afflicted, I went astray," saith he: but God brought him home again by weeping cross. He once so leapt over the pale, that he broke his bones, and felt the pain of it to his dying day: he brake God's hedge, and a serpent bit him, Ecclesiastes 10:8; his conscience flew in his face, the guilt whereof is compared by Solomon to the biting of a serpent and sting of an adder, Proverbs 23:32; "he roared for the disquietness of his heart": but better so, than roar in hell, where is punishment without pity, misery without mercy, sorrow without succour (help), crying without comfort, mischief without measure, torment without end and past imagination. The prophet Amos likeneth incorrigible persons to horses running upon a rock, where first they break their hoofs, and then their necks, Amos 6:12. Another fitly compareth them to that Jesuit in Lancashire, who followed by one that found his glove with a desire to restore it him, but pursued inwardly by a guilty conscience, leaps over a hedge, plunges into a clay pit behind it unseen and unthought of, wherein he was drowned. To prevent their deserved destruction (if it may be) God telleth them here that he will not only hedge them in but wall up their way.
And make a wall] Macerabo maceriam, I will wall a wall, and immure her: as jealous husbands do their wives whom they mistrust. And this God speaks by an apostrophe to others, as loathing the thought that ever he should be put to it.
I will make a wall that she shall not find her paths] q.d. I will hamper her and handle her as she was never handled. By a like passionate apostrophe, Genesis 49:4, old Jacob, speaking of Reuben's incest, "Thou wentest up to thy father's bed: then defiledst thou it": moved with the odiousness of the fact, he breaks off his speech with Reuben, and turning him to the rest, he addeth, "He went up to my couch": q.d. Out upon it, I am the worse to think of it. Maginus tells us, that in Lithuania the men are such fools, that they allow their wives to have their stallions, whom they call Connubii adiutores, and prize them far above all their acquaintance. And Balthasar Exnerus telleth us of a certain Duke of Oppania, who marrying a Lithuanian lady, and going forth to meet her, when she came first to him, he found in her company one of that rank, a lusty young fellow; whom, when he understood what he was, and wherefore he came, voluit laniandum canibus obiecere, he was once in mind to make dog's meat of him. But understanding that it was the custom of that country, he sent him home again without further hurt. The Lord our God is a jealous God: and be the gods of the heathens good fellows, saith one, yet he will not endure co-rivals; nor share his glory with another. "Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? And why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? Thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt as thou wast ashamed of Assyria. Yea, thou shalt go forth from him," i.e. from the Egyptian, thy present patron and protector; "and thy hands upon thy head," which was the gesture of women in great sorrow, 2 Samuel 13:19 : "for the Lord hath rejected thy confidence, and thou shalt not prosper in them," Jeremiah 2:33; Jeremiah 2:36,37. This people, to have a stake in store, howsoever the dice chanced to turn, sought to join friendship as soon with the Assyrian as with the Egyptian, and so to secure themselves: but it would not do. They followed after these lovers, but could never overtake them. Egypt proved but a broken reed. Assyria, the rod of God's wrath, the staff in his hand, Isaiah 10:5, yea, the hedge of his making, hemmed them in by strait sieges, both at Samaria and Jerusalem: till at length the Romans came, and walling them about, till they were forced to yield, took away both their place and their nation, according to that they feared, John 11:48, and caused to cease the daily sacrifice, which they would needs till then hold out in opposition to the gospel.
That she shall not find her paths] Those highways to hell, wherein she hath hitherto tired herself by trotting after her lovers. Drusius noteth here that a harlot hath her name in the Chaldean tongue from her tracing up and down, יעתכרא, delighting to be abroad altogether, to see and to be seen, that she may draw in the silly simple. See Proverbs 7:11,12. See Trapp on " Pro 7:11 " See Trapp on " Pro 7:12 " God is able to strike such people with such blindness as he did the wicked Sodomites at Lot's door, subito scotomate, saith Junius, such as tormented their eyes as if they had been pricked with thorns, as the Hebrew moral there signifieth, Genesis 19:11. See Psa 75:6 Isaiah 29:19; Isaiah 19:11,13. The fool knoweth not how to go to the city, Ecclesiastes 10:15, they are so blinded and baffled many times in their own ways. God loves to make fools of them.