They have dealt treacherously against the LORD: for they have begotten strange children: now shall a month devour them with their portions.
Ver. 7. They have dealt treacherously against the Lord] They have dealt deceitfully in the covenant, they are a perfidious cursed crew of them; this I see well enough, saith God, though they may think to darken my eyesight with the smoke of their many sacrifices, or to stop my mouth with their great presents. See how he complaineth, as in this prophecy often, so Jeremiah 3:20, "Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have you dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel." Now in such a case a man will not regard any ransom; neither will he rest content, though thou givest many gifts; he will not be a pander to his own bed unless he be very base indeed, Proverbs 6:35. Most certain it is, that God will not endure any such doings; but though he loves his spouse never so well, yet if she plays false with him, and admit any other into the bridal bed, he will forsake his house that has been so dishonest, he will leave his heritage that has been so embased, he will give the dearly beloved of his soul into the hand of her enemies, Jeremiah 12:7, who shall hate her more than ever they loved her, as Amnon did Tamar, and deal cruelly with her, as Eze 16:1-63 is at large discoursed. The wickedness of this people was the greater, for that they pretended religion as in Hos 5:6 to their base beastly practices. Dissembled sanctity is double iniquity. See how heinously God takes it, Jeremiah 7:9,10. And when others deal treacherously and unworthily with you, see whether you have not done as badly and worse against the Lord, Alphonsus, king of Aragon, in a speech to the pope's ambassador, professed that he did not so much wonder at his courtiers' ingratitude to him (who had raised various of them from mean to great estates) as at his own to God.
For they have begotten strange children] Bastards, such as the Jews call Mamzer, as ye would say, aliena labes, a strange blot. They call them also brambles, such as was Abimelech, who grew in the hedge row of a harlot, and scratched and drew blood to purpose, Judges 9:14. That which is here charged upon the Israelites is, that they had not only taken to wife the daughters of a strange god, or begotten bastards of harlots, but they had muzzled up their children in idolatry, and so made them sevenfold worse the children of the devil than before. This was a very great aggravation of their treachery, that they should empoison their posterity and propagate their wickedness from one generation to another; that there should be a line and a succession of it from their loins. None are so ready to drink in false principles and corrupt practices as young ones. Such parents as have a hand in undoing their children, either by ill counsel or example, are peremptores potius quam parentes, saith Bernard, rather parricides than parents. They shall give a heavy account to God for their children's misdeeds. Let it therefore be the care of parents, as to keep themselves pure, so to see to their little ones, that they be not corrupted. Satan bears an implacable spite and hatred to them, as the seedplot of heaven; and hath his emissaries abroad to mar them. Such was Protagoras, of whom Plato reporteth, that he gloried of this, that whereas he had lived sixty years in all, forty of them he had spent in corrupting young people (Plato in Menone). Of Julian the apostate it is reported, that being of excellent parts and proof, both in learning and religion, while he was young, he was afterwards corrupted by his two heathenish tutors, Libanius and Jamblichus, through the carelessness of Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, who should have seen better to it and that this was a main cause of his apostasy.
Now shall a month devour them with their portions] Some read it thus, Now shall the enemy devour them month after month; others put menses for menstrua, and give this sense. Like as this people make no bones to break their faith with God by spiritual fornication, mingling as it were their seed with strange gods and foreign people; so shall it come to them which happeneth to women worn with adulteries (as Ezekiel speaketh), that their monthly diseases, procured by inordinate lust, shall eat up and consume their bodies. (See Tremel. and Jun. Annot.) For confirmation, they allege (but not so properly) Jeremiah 2:24. I willingly concur with those that by a month understand a little short time. How soon is a month run out And yet what havoc will an enemy make in a month's time! as we have had woeful experience in these late stripping and killing times. Them and their portions shall one month make an end of. Death heweth its way through a wood of men in a minute of time from the mouth of a murdering piece. "The sword contemneth the rod," Ezekiel 21:13, as if it should say, What doth this silly rod do here? Let me come; I will quickly make work among them. I will dung the land with their carcases, &c., with their portions, the lots of their inheritance. Wicked men also have their portions in this life, Psalms 17:14, they live in pleasure on the earth, and are wanton, James 5:5, but their portion is none other but a month may devour it: their pleasure none other but one drop of an evil conscience may damp and dissweeten it. But if God be thy portion, &c.