Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax [given] to cover her nakedness.
Ver. 9. Therefore will I return] i.e. I will alter my course, change my stand, change the way of mine administrations, deal otherwise with them than yet I have done: they shall bear their iniquities, and know my breach of promise, as Numbers 14:34; they shall know the worth of mine abused mercies by the want of them another while. "I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early," Hosea 5:15. Finally, I will cut them short of alimony, and hold them to strait allowance; and then I shall be sure to hear them howling upon their beds for grain and wine, Hosea 7:14, as dogs do that are tied up, and cannot come at their meat.
And take away my corn and my wine] Those precious fruits of the earth, as St James calleth them, James 5:7, the product of God's great care, from year's end to year's end, Deuteronomy 11:12, without which the earth could not yield her increase: neither would there be a vein for the silver, a mine for the gold, iron taken out of the earth, or brass molten out of the stone, Job 28:2. All that we have is his, in true account, and he is the great proprietor who only can say (as he in the Gospel), "May not I do what I will with mine own?" Matthew 20:15. And what should he sooner and rather do than take away food from his child that mars it? If fulness breed forgetfulness (as the fed hawk forgets his master, and as the full moon gets farthest off from the sun), so men, when they have all things at the full, forget God, and wickedly depart from him, what can he do less than forget them (that so they may remember themselves), and make fat Jeshurun look with lean cheeks, that they may leave kicking, and learn righteousness? Deu 32:15 Isaiah 26:9. Neither doth God do this till greatly provoked, till there is a cause for it, therefore I will return. He may well say, as that Roman emperor did, when he was to pronounce sentence of death, Non nisi coactus, I am even compelled to it, there is no other remedy, 2 Chronicles 36:16. As a woman brings not forth but with pain; and as a bee stings not, but provoked: so here, Ille dolet quoties cogitur esse ferox, he afflicteth not willingly, nor grieves the children of men, Lamentations 3:33. It is sin that maketh him return, as here; that puts him out of his road of mercy into ways of iudgment, that putteth thunderbolts into his hand, and maketh him "do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act," Isaiah 28:21. What can a prince do less than disarm a rebel? what can God do less than take away his own and be gone from such an impudent adulteress, as is here described? should he allowr her with his grain "to make cakes to the queen of heaven," Jeremiah 7:18, and to pour ou this wine for drink offerings to other gods, that they might provoke him to anger? No: rather than so, he will -
take away the corn in the time thereof, and his wine in the season thereof] He will cut off the meat from their very mouths, Joel 1:16, and pull their morsel from between their teeth. Just at harvest, when their grain is to be harvested, God will blast it, or otherwise blow upon it; when all their old store is spent, and they reckoned upon a good recruit, they shall be defeated and frustrated. "Therefore hath God watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us," saith Daniel, Daniel 9:14. Lo, God watcheth his time when to be even with his enemies: and taketh his fittest opportunity for their greater mischief. They that are wicked overmuch shall die before their time, Ecclesiastes 7:17. Not before God's time (for stat sua cuique dies, every man's time is set, Job 7:1, our bounds are prescribed us, and a pillar pitched up by him, who bears up the heavens, which we are not to trespass), but before their own time that they had propounded and promised to themselves, as that rich fool, Luke 12:19, who talked to himself (as fools use to do), Luke 12:17, saying, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years." But we know what became of him that very night; his many years were quickly up, his glass was run when he thought it had been but new turned. God shot at him with an arrow suddenly, Psalms 64:7, he fetched off this bird with a bolt while he was gazing at the bow or pruning himself upon a bough. He chopped into the earth before he was aware as one that walketh in the snow chops into a pit. He died, tempore non suo (as some render that forecited text in Ecclesiastes), not in his own time, but in God's time; then when it had been better for that fool to have done anything than to have died, because (like Eli's sons) he died in his sins: and, like Jezebel's children, he was killed with death, Rev 2:23 This made Austin say, that he would not for the gain of a world be an atheist for one half hour: because he knew not but that God might in that time, call him; and then, "what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained when God taketh away his soul?" Job 27:8. He is troubled, when God taketh away "his corn in the time thereof, and his wine in the season thereof": he is hungry and hardly bestead, and therefore ready "to curse God, and look upward," Isaiah 8:21, howling against heaven, as the hungry wolf. But first he should consider, that the corn and wine and wool and flax that he hath in keeping is not his, but God's; and that he reserves the propriety of all in his own hand: neither hath any man aught, in reference to him, the monarch of the world, that he can call his own. The rich fool indeed talked much in this manner, Luke 12:18 : "I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods." All was his own belike: God was not in all this man's thoughts; for if he had, he would soon have known what to have done: sc. he would have acknowledged God the author and owner of all (as Moses mindeth men, Deu 8:17-18), he would also have fed the hungry with his corn, and clothed the naked with his wool and flax, as Tyre converted did with her merchandise, Isaiah 23:18, he would have said to God, as David did, "All things come of thee, and of thine own we give thee," 1 Chronicles 29:14. Bernard reports of Pope Eugenius, that meeting with a poor but honest bishop, he secretly gave him certain jewels wherewith he might present him. If God did not first furnish us out of his treasury we should have nothing wherewith either to honour him or to help ourselves or others God's poor, I mean, whom Solomon calleth owners of our goods, and maketh us but their stewards, Proverbs 3:27 : withhold not thy goods from the owners thereof. Next, the hunger bitten hypocrite should consider that there is worse hunger yet behind, and a heavy account to be given of the grain, wine, wool, and flax, the creatures that he hath detained in un righteousness, and spent upon his lusts, James 4:3. If the husbandman must be ashamed, and howl because the harvest of the field is perished; if the drunkards must wake, weep, and wail because the new wine is cut off from their mouths, Joel 1:5; Joel 1:11; how shall they much more howl in hell, ubi nullus unquam cibus est, nulla consolatio, saith Bernard, where there is no manner of meat, no drop of water to be had for love or money; where they must fast, and find no mercy for ever; where they must hunger and thirst in aeterno Dei, as the schools speak, as long as God is God. The sufferings of this world to the wicked is but as the falling of the leaves in comparison of the trees that will fall upon him hereafter, in that eternity of extremities. If here, "In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits, and every hand of the troublesome shall come upon him. When he is about to fill his belly God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating," as it is threatened, Job 20:22,23, what, think we, will their portion be in hell? Meanwhile God will
recover his wool and his flax] He will snatch it away (as the word signifieth) in great displeasure, as a man doth his stolen goods out of the hands of a thief; he will rescue them, as Abraham did Lot and the captives from Chedorlaomer, Genesis 14:16, as David did his wives, goods, and friends from the Amalekitish rovers, 1 Samuel 30:18,20. The poor creatures, grain, wine, wool, &c., groan heavily under the abuse of graceless persons, Romans 8:22, and God heareth them, as he did the oppressed Israelites in Egypt, "for he is gracious," he hears them, I say, and recovers them; he spoils their possessors of them, as Jacob did Laban of his sheep, as the Israelites did the Egyptians of their jewels: the same word is used there, as here, הצלתי, Genesis 31:10; Genesis 31:16, and it is a wonderful significant word, saith Mercer. St Paul imitateth it when he saith the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption. This God doth when he snateheth away kingdoms from tyrants, wealth from worldlings, strength from roysters, spiritual common gifts from the proud and secure, Zechariah 11:17. See Trapp on " Zec 11:17 " When men abuse mercies, they forfeit their right in them: wicked men have not only a civil title but a right before God to the things that they possess; it is their portion, Psalms 17:14. And what Ananias had was his own while he had it, Acts 5:4. And God gave Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar as pay for his pains in taking Tyre. True it is, all was forfeited in Adam; but wicked men have yet a right to all they do enjoy in a lawful way, by divine donation, till the day of execution: as when a traitor hath his life given him, for a time at least, he hath meat and drink also given him to maintain his life for that time. God dealeth not as that cruel Duke D'Alva did, who starved some prisoners after that he had given them quarter, saying, Though I promised you your lives, I promised not to find you meat (Hist. of Netherlands). That which wicked men are charged with, and shall be accountable for, is, not their right to use the creatures, but their not right using them. This makes the creature cry in its kind and long for liberty; even as birds do that thrust a long neck out of the cage (so much the apostle's word importeth, Romans 8:19, αποκαραδοκια). And God, who heareth the cry of the widow and fatherless, and looseth his prisoners, Psalms 146:7, hears and frees the poor creatures groaning under man's abuse.
Given to cover her nakedness] This is the end of garments, so called quasi gardmentes; they arm and fence our bodies against the injury of wind and weather, against heat of summer, cold of winter; they also cover our nakedness and deformity, those parts especially that are by an antiphrasis called verenda et pudenda (here principally perhaps intended), because they ought never to be laid naked, but kept covered, pudoris gratia, for common honesty's sake (Vatablus), "that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear," Revelation 3:18. Nature teacheth to cover our nakedness; therefore also when a man hath committed a sin he blusheth; the blood, as it were, would cover the sin. But nothing will do that, save only the righteousness of Christ, the fleece of that immaculate lamb of God, whom therefore we must put on, Romans 13:14, in all his offices and efficacies. Our first parents indeed were born with the royal robe of original righteousness on their back; but the devil soon stripped them of it, and from that time on they became sore ashamed of their bodily nakedness (but chiefly of their spiritual), which therefore they sought to hide as they could, their privities especially. Whence some are of the opinion that to look upon the nakedness of another is a sin against nature. The prophet Habakkuk taxeth it in the Chaldees, Habakkuk 2:15, and the Hebrews there say, It was a filthy custom among them, common at their feasts. Clothes are the ensigns of man's sins and the cover of our shame. To be proud of them is as for a thief to be proud of his halter: to brag of them is as for the lepper to brag of a plaster laid to his filthy sore: the fineness of such is their filthiness; their neatness nastiness, as one speaketh.