O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness [is] as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.
Ver. 4. O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee, &c.] See how soon the prophet changeth his note. Hitherto he had set forth their repentance in sense of mercy; now all of a sudden he upbraideth and threateneth them for their incorrigibleness and inconstancy. Ministers must turn themselves, as it were, into all shapes and fashions, both of speech and spirit, to win people to God. Aaron's bells must be wisely rung, saith one. Sometimes the treble of mercy sounds well, at other times the tenor of judgment, or counter tenor of reproof, sounds better; and it often happens that the means of exhortation soundeth best of all. It is his wisdom to observe circumstances, and know how to curse as well as bless, chide as well as comfort, and speak war to a rebel as well as peace to a friend. And herein indeed lieth the wisdom and faithfulness of a teacher. Then, and only then, shall he prove himself sincere and impartial, when he holds this course. "What shall I do unto thee?" It is as if God should say, I have done my utmost, as Isa 5:5 Micah 5:3, and now am I at a stand, and can scarce tell what to do more. See the like expostulatory complaints, Jer 2:30-31 Hosea 5:3 Amo 4:6 Isa 26:10 Matthew 11:16,18; Matthew 23:37. I would, but thou wouldst not. As the loving hen is always caring for her chickens, and calling them about her, that she may gather and guard them from the mischief of all vermin; but they will needs be straggling, and so perish; so if God's people will not hearken to his voice, if Israel will none of him, what can he do less than give them up to their own hearts' lusts, Psalms 81:12, yea, give them up to the devil, to be further hardened to their just destruction, saying, that which will die, let it die? All that God can do is, as here, to mourn for their obstinacy and fool-hardiness in rejecting his grace, as he wept over Jerusalem, Luke 19:42. We should also do the like, crying out with Isaiah, "My leanness, my leanness!" and with Jeremiah, "My bowels, my bowels!" and with Paul, I have "great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart," for my perverse countrymen, Isa 24:16 Jeremiah 4:19 Romans 9:2. Peter calleth them an untoward generation, Acts 2:40; such crooked pieces that there was no working upon them. A cunning carver can cut the similitude of any creature, yet not on a crooked or rotten stick. Where lieth the fault? surely in the crookedness of the stick, and not in the carver's cunning: so is it here. When men wrestle with God, as Deuteronomy 32:5, shift him off, as the apostle's word, παραιτησησθε, signifieth, Hebrews 12:25, take up the bucklers against the sword of his Spirit, lest it should prick them at heart, as Acts 2:37, and let out the life blood of their lusts, that they might live; what can the Lord do in this case more than pity their unhappiness, and punish them for their stubborness, as the judge pitieth a malefactor, as he is a man, but yet condemneth him as a thief or murderer? Tell me not here, that God could have done more for Ephraim and Judah than he did; and they might have said in answer to God's question here, as that leper in the gospel did, Why? "Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me clean," Matthew 8:2. Hence it is God by his absolute power can make iron swim, rocks stream forth water, stones to yield children to Abraham; he can do whatsoever he pleaseth; save without means, &c. But it is his actual power that men must look to. And so he (having tied the end and means together) cannot (say divines), because he will not, bring men to the end, without their using those means which tend unto the end; for that is the ordinary course which he hath decreed to use, and which he will not alter, but upon special occasion, as our Saviour noteth in the cure of Naaman, and in the feeding of the widow of Sarepta, Luke 4:26,27 .
For your goodness is as the morning cloud, &c.] This people hearing God say, What shall I do unto you? might possibly reply, Why? what should you do but rain down righteousness upon us, and load us with loving-kindness? for we are good all over, we have returned and done right in thy sight, as it is said of those hypocrites, Jeremiah 34:15,16, and as Peter saith of some apostates in his time, that they were clean escaped from them who live in error; and (for matter of practice) they had also escaped the pollutions of the world; knew the way of righteousness, and seemed very forward in it; were as the fore-horses in a team, ringleaders of good exercises, &c.; who yet afterwards fell off to the world, turned from the holy commandments, and returned with the dog to their vomit, and with the washed sow to her wallowing again in the mire. And this is that which the Lord here upbraideth this people with (and so stops their mouths), viz., that their goodness or mercifulness, their piety toward God and charity toward men, was nothing else but a morning cloud, Judges 1:12, a waterless cloud, as Jude hath it, a mere flaunt, or flash, an outside only, an empty sound, a vain pretence. It was also as the morning dew, which is soon dried up by the sunbeams. In a word, they were both false and fickle, unsteady and unstable, constant only in their inconstancy. Hence this pathetic complaint of them; God knew not where to have them, and therefore not what to do with them. These were never right with God, because not stedfast in his covenant, Psalms 78:36,37; they are unstable as water, therefore they shall not excel, Genesis 49:4; they never were a willing people in the day of Christ's power, Psalms 110:3, his power was never put forth upon them, to subdue their wills to God's will. They never yet attained to that spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind, 2 Timothy 1:7. Inconstancy comes from weakness. "The strength of Israel repenteth not," 1 Samuel 15:29 .