My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.
Ver. 6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge] "My people" (there is the wonder of it), of whom it was wont to be said by the heathen, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people": and well it might: for what nation ever had God so nigh unto them, &c., and statutes and judgments so righteous, &c.? Deuteronomy 4:6,8; what nation ever had prophets and priests as they had, to teach Jacob his statutes and Israel his law? Deuteronomy 33:10. All means of knowledge they had that might be; so that God might say to them, as once Abijam did to Jeroboam and all Israel, "Ought you not to have known this?" 2 Chronicles 13:5; should ye not all "know the Lord from the least to the greatest?" should not your land be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea? Habakkuk 2:14. Doth not wisdom cry in your streets? and knowledge (in the abundance of means) bow down to you as trees do that are laden with fruit, so that a child may gather them? How is it then that you (my people) are yet so hard and blockish, as rude and ignorant of me and my will, of yourselves and your duties, as the blind Ethnics? For some of you have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. Yea, "who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I sent? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord's servant?" Isaiah 42:19. I speak it with grief and stomach, and therefore I so oft speak it. Surely to whomsoever much is given much is required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more, Luke 12:48. It is a grievous thing to receive the grace of God in vain, 2 Corinthians 6:1; and when for the time men might have been teachers, to have need to be taught the very first principles of the oracles of God, Hebrews 5:12. For if God will pour out his wrath upon the heathen that know him not, Jeremiah 10:25, who yet were left in the dark, to grope after him as they could, Acts 17:27; and if the poor philosophers (who had but the rush candle of nature's dim light to work by) were yet delivered up to a reprobate sense, because they glorified God no better, Romans 1:28; oh the bloody weals that he will make upon the backs of his non-proficients, sots and dullards in his school! Ingentia beneficia, flagitia supplicia.
Are destroyed] Or, silenced, as Matthew 22:12. The Chaldee rendereth it obrutuerunt, they are besotted, and so fitted for destruction; for Deus quem destruit dementat. Ignorance is the mother, not of devotion (as Papists say), but of destruction; and ignorant persons shall be silent in darkness, as holy Hannah hath it; they shall lie down in sorrow, as the prophet Isaiah. And although they always wander and err in heart, as not knowing God's ways, Psalms 95:10,11, yet they cannot go so far wide as to miss hell, where they are sure to suffer both pain of loss and pain of sense; for they shall be "punished with everlasting destruction, in a flame of fire" (there is pain of sense), "from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (there is pain of loss), 2 Thessalonians 2:8,9. Lo, here the portion of all ignorant persons, and withal take notice of a usual and equal proceeding of God's impartial justice in punishing such. He delights to punish sin in kind, to pay wicked persons in their own coin, to overshoot them in their own bow, to answer them in their own language, as he once did those bold Babel builders, Genesis 11:4. Go to, say they; Go to, saith he: Let us build up to heaven, say they; Let us go down, and see that building, saith he: Let us make us a name, say they; Let us confound their language, that they may not so much as know their own names, saith he: Lest we be scattered, say they; Let us scatter them abroad in the world, saith he. Thus God worded it with them, and confuted their folly from point to point. And the like he will do with ignorant people at that great day. Depart from us, say they now to God, Job 21:14; Depart from me, ye cursed, will he then say to them. We desire not the knowledge of thy ways, say they, ibid.; Therefore I have sworn in my wrath, that you shall never enter into my rest, saith he. Ye have loved darkness better than light, ye shall therefore have your belly full of it in the bottom of hell. God loves to retaliate, as we may see here, and go no farther. "Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee; seeing thou hast forgot the law of thy God, I will also" (to cry quittance with thee) "forget thy children." Thus, by giving ignorant persons their own, he will so silence them, and even button up their mouths, that they shall stand speechless, as being self-condemned.
For lack of knowledge] Propter non scientiam, for mere nescience, for such an ignorance as is privative only, and of pure negation, which doth somewhat excuse a tanto, though not a toto; as in that servant that knew not his master's will, yet did commit things worthy of stripes, and had a few, Luke 12:48. But Israel's ignorance was more than all this, and a great deal worse. "For did not Israel know?" Romans 10:19, and "have they not heard?" yes, verily. Hos 4:18 No people under heaven like them for that, Psalms 147:19. But they rejected knowledge, and affected ignorance; they hated the light, and loved darkness better. This was the condemnation, the mischief of it, saith our Saviour, who (besides this wilful ignorance, that mother of mischief, and main support of Satan's kingdom) laid down his life for the nesciences, the not-knowings of his people, δια των αγνοηματων, Hebrews 9:7, and prayed for his persecutors at his death: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."
Because thou hast rejected knowledge] And that out of an utter hatred of it (as the Greek word made of the Hebrew signifieth, מאם thence μισεω), out of deep disdain, as of a thing below thee, and vile in thine eyes, not worthy of thy pains, or pursuit. Wisdom is the principal thing (saith Solomon, and he meaneth that wisdom that hath the fear of God for its foundation), therefore get wisdom, Proverbs 4:5. It is here called hadagnath, that knowledge, by an excellence, and with an accent, in opposition to that science, falsely so called, 1 Timothy 6:20; that knowledge that puffeth up, 1 Corinthians 8:1, as it did Joseph Scaliger (that gulf of learning), for whom it had been happy, that he had been ignorant but of this one thing, that he knew so much. It is the "acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness" (as the apostle describeth it, Tit 1:1), that perfects the best part of a man, that confirmeth, settleth, guideth, discerneth, differenceth him from others, who are no better than brutes (though wise in their own generation, as are the fox, serpent, &c.), and maketh his face to shine, Ecclesiastes 8:1, as St Stephen's did, who was taught of God, and mighty in the Scriptures. This holy knowledge was highly prized by Agur, Proverbs 30:2, but slighted by those two slubbering priests, the sons of Eli, sons of Belial, they knew not the Lord, 1 Samuel 2:12; they knew him apprehensively, but not effectively; they professed that they knew God, but in their works they denied him, being abominable, and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate, Titus 1:16. "He that saith, I know him" (saith St John, 1Jn 2:4), "and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." Many of these Jeroboam's priests were ignorant asses; like that bishop of Durkelden, in Scotland, who boasted, yea, thanked God, that he never knew what the Old and New Testament was, and that he would care to know nothing but his Portuise and his Pontifical; or that idol pastor in Germany, who being asked by the visitors, whether he taught his people the Decalogue? answered, that he had not the book so called (Joh. Manl. loc. com.). Others of them, that knew more of God's mind, yet neither cared to practise it, nor to teach transgressors God's ways, that sinners might be converted unto him, Psalms 51:13 .
I will also reject thee] And that with a witness, with an unwonted and extraordinary rejection, as the Hebrew word, Veemaseka (not found elsewhere in the same form), seemeth to import (Tremel. in locum); God will kick such ignoramuses out of the priesthood, cast them out of the hearts of his people, throw them to the dunghill, as unsavoury salt; yea, so reject them, as never to be received again, Ezekiel 44:13. God will shake them out from his house, and from his labour, Nehemiah 5:13 (as the Tirshatha did those apostate priests, Ezr 2:63), and lay them by, as broken vessels of which there is no further use; taking from them even that which they seemed to have, Luke 8:18, and blasting their gifts. See Zechariah 11:17, See Trapp on " Zec 11:17 "
Seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God] i.e. All that holy learning which thou, being a priest, oughtest to have and to hold in firm and fresh remembrance, for the good of the poor people, which, by thy default, is cut off for lack of knowledge, even the knowledge of the salvation by the remission of their sins, which thou shouldest have given them, Luke 1:77, not by infusion, but by instruction, which is the priest's proper office. But thou (alas) hast forgotten that little of my law thou once hadst attained unto; and art grown as very a dolt and dotard as Theodorus Gaza (once a great scholar, but), in his dotage so ignorant, that he knew not his letters; he could not read. Nay, thou art not only a silly ass, but a slow belly; all thy care is for fat sacrifices and benefices, thy wits are in thy belly, and thy guts in thy brain; hence thy forgetfulness of my law, and of my people's welfare. The Arabic translation hath it thus, "Inasmuch as thou hast loved this, and the consolation, therefore I will reject and forget thee," &c. Demas forsook Paul, and embraced this present world; yea, he became afterwards a priest in an idol temple at Thessalonica, as Dorotheus testifieth. The Vulgate Latin translation rendereth this text in the feminine gender, quia oblita est, against all grammar and good reason; for the Lord here speaketh to the priest, and chiefly to the chief priest, qui certe femina non erat, who certainly was not a woman, saith Polanus, who sure was no woman; unless the old interpreter (like another Balaam's ass) would have this to have been spoken against the see of Rome, wherein Pope Joan sometime sat, A.D. 854. Sure it is, that the arch-priests of Rome are so delighted in the feminine gender, that they had rather attribute the breaking of the serpent's head to a woman, the Virgin Mary, than to the "man Christ Jesus"; for in their last edition of the Latin Bible, they print, Genesis 3:15, Ipsa conteret tibi caput, She shall bruise thine head, &c. Thus Polanus.
I also will forget thy children] Thy spiritual children, say some, even that whole people who saluted their priests (as the Papists do their padres) by the name of father, and observed their institutes. But they do better that understand the text of their natural children, whom God here threateneth to forget, that is, to put them by the priest's office, as he threatened Eli, 1 Samuel 2:30, and thrust out Abiathar, 1 Kings 2:27, fourscore years after. It is a dreadful thing to be forgotten of God. We take it ill to be forgotten of a friend, and to be as a dead man, out of mind, Psalms 31:12. O take heed that God forget not us and our children: that he cast not off the care and keeping of us. He is so liberal a Lord, and doth so little forget our labour of love and patience of hope, as that he provideth for the posterity of his people: Psalms 69:36, "The seed also of the servants shall inherit it: and they that love his name shall dwell therein." Who then would not hire himself to such a master; who would not remember God's law and teach it others, if but for his poor children's sake, who else will rue for it?