And I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for [another] man: so [will] I also [be] for thee.
Ver. 3. Thou shalt abide for me many days] Even till the last days, Hosea 3:5, or last year, as Ezekiel hath it, Ezekiel 38:8. Thus they have abode, or sat (as a desolate widow, so the Hebrew hath it), 700 years before Christ, and above 1600 years since, in a most forlorn condition; crying out in their, daily prayers to God, Veniat regnum tuum, bimherah, beiamenu, Let thy kingdom come speedily, even in our days. And again, Aedifica templum tuum, aedifica, aedifica, cito, cito, cito; Lord, build, build, build thy Temple quickly, quickly, quickly. But God's time is not yet come; for they are not yet throughly humbled. Were they but ripe, he is ready; when help is seasonable, his fingers itch (saith one) to be doing, as the mother's breast aches when it is time the child had suck, Exodus 12:40,41. At midnight were the firstborn slain and Israel sent away, because then exactly the 400 or 430 years of their captivity in Egypt were expired. So Daniel 5:30, "In that night was Belshazzar slain"; because then exactly the seventy years were ended. God promiseth to take this Church again to wife, but having found her formerly so fickle and faithless, he would for a long time try her, and keep her unmarried as a probationer: he would lay her (as we do filthy garments) a soaking and a frosting for many hundred years, to try them, "and to purge, and to make white, even to the time of the end, because it is yet for a time appointed," Daniel 11:35. And to presume to prescribe to him in this case is to set the sun by our dial. As he never fails his in his own time, so he seldom comes at ours. Here, then, our strength is to sit still, Isaiah 30:7, and not to start up, and say, as that impatient prince did, "What should I wait for the Lord any longer?" 2 Kings 6:33. Shall Christ lose his right in his wife, because he takes her not by the day set down in our calendar? possibly the calendar of heaven hath a postdate to ours. Sure it is, that we are apt to antedate the promises in regard of the accomplishment, as those, Jeremiah 8:20, that looked for help that summer at farthest, but were deceived. See the disease and the remedy put together, Habakkuk 2:2,3, and learn to wait. God will surely bring us to it if we belong to him: and thereby inure us both to patience and continence as here.
Thou shalt not play the harlot, &c.] Thou sbalt not hasten after another God, and so multiply sorrows upon thyself, Psalms 16:4; as he that hath broke prison gets but more irons to be laid upon him and a stricter watch, Psalms 44:19; the Church, though sore broken in the place of dragons, and covered with the shadow of death, yet she stretched not out her hands to a strange God. She knew that was not the way to get off with comfort. Is it because there is no God in Israel, that thou gaddest to the god of Ekron? 2 Kings 1:3 "Should not a people seek unto their God? or the living to the dead?" Isaiah 8:19. Should they seek to slip out at a backdoor and to help themselves by sorry shifts or sinister practices? Is that ever like to do well? or will not such be miserable even by their own election? John 2:8. Wherefore if God defer to help (as he doth usually), hold out faith and patience, wait upon him who even waits to be gracious, for he is a God of judgment, and well knoweth how and when to deal forth his favours, Isaiah 30:18 Cito data cito vilescunt, Manna being lightly come by, was as lightly set by. He therefore suspends us, that he may commend his mercies to us; and when he comes with them, be the better welcome. The longer he holds us in request the more will he do for us at length; and if we abide for him many days we shall be no losers thereby.
For I also will be for thee] He will love those that love him, and honour those that honour him, Proverbs 8:17 1 Samuel 2:30. Yea, "if any man love me," saith Christ, "my Father will love him, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him," John 14:21,23. "I will gather them" (sc. into my bosom out of all nations) "that are sorrowful for the solemn assembly who are of thee, to whom the reproach of it was a burthen. Behold, at that time I will undo all that afflict thee," &c., Zephaniah 3:18,20. God esteems highly those that abide for him in their banishment, that stay for him till he mind marriage with them, that stick to him in affliction, that resolve to reserve themselves for him, so as if they cannot have comfort in God they will have none elsewhere. The Cherethites and the Pelethites that were with David at Gath, and afterwards stuck to him when Absalom was up, they were ever near about him, as his guard, and dear to him as his favourites. God is All in all to those that with the spouse will be his altogether: he will do good to them with his whole heart that seek him with their whole heart, &c., Jeremiah 29:13 .