For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and [without] teraphim:
Ver. 4. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, &c.] They shall be, as it is said of the Brazilians, Sine rege, sine lege, sine fide, without a king, without law, without hope, in a woeful confused estate, both for state and Church. This they had brought upon themselves by their idols set up at Dan and Bethel; that is, in the place of judgment, and in the house of God (so Dan and Bethel signify). Bethel was become Bethaven, and the place of judicature (called by Solomon the place of the Holy God, Ecc 8:10), so corrupted, that people were ready to say, as Themistocles once did, that if there were two ways showed him, the one leading to hell and the other to the tribunal, he would choose that which went to hell and forsake the other. That corruption caused this confusion. The children of Israel shall be without and withont, here are six withouts, that they might be sensible of their abuse of mercies, and see bona a tergo formosissima, good things fairest behind, their worth best appearing by their want. The Persian law commanded that at the death of their kings there should be πενθ ημερων ανομιαν, a suspension of laws, a lawless liberty, for the length of five days (Stob. Orat. 42), that subjects might know the necessity of government by being bereft of the benefit of it for a time; and the better prize it when they had it. The like custom they have now in Turkey at the death of the Grand Signor, which is no sooner known but every man doth what is good in his own eyes, till his successor be sent for, and set upon his throne. Israel hath neither king nor prince, ruler nor civil magistrates of their own, (the ten tribes, I mean: for Judah hath both prince and priests after the captivity, till the last desolation, since which they have) no form nor face of Church or commonwealth, no, not of a corrupt or depraved Church, meant here by image and teraphim, see 2Ki 17:10 Judges 17:5, which much less of such a one as God had prescribed, meant by sacrifices and ephod. Prosper's conceit was that this people were called Iudaei Jews because they received ius Dei, their law, from God's mouth. And Josephus calleth their commonwealth a theocracy, or government by God. They received their order both for Church and commonwealth from heaven: which no other people ever did in the same manner; and might truly take up that of the prophet, Isaiah 33:22, "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King, he will save us." But man being in honour is without understanding. "Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked; then he forsook God which made him, and sacrificed unto devils, not to God, to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up," Deuteronomy 32:15; Deuteronomy 32:17. When Ephraim spake and spake right there was trembling, and none dared budge against him: but when he offended in Baal he died, Hosea 13:1, then every paltry adversary trampled upon him as a dead man, then every scurrilous poet could insult over him and cry, Credat Iudaeus Apella, Non ego; then every common Turk could, by way of execration, say, Iudaeus sim si fallo; and in detestation of a thing, I would I might die a Jew then. A dispersed and despised people they are (none more) under the cope of heaven; partly for their former idolatry, but principally for their rejecting Christ crucified, whom they cannot but in their conscience know to be the Shiloh that should come, since the sceptre is so long since departed from Judah, and a lawgiver from between his feet, Genesis 49:10. That for their sins, which are many (say the Talmudists), he yet hides himself in the caverns and secret places of the earth, is σοφον φαρμακον, a simple pretence, or rather a subtlety of Satan, to hold them still in blindness till God unseal their eyes; till when things that are never so dear will not be believed.