For they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie in wait: their baker sleepeth all the night; in the morning it burneth as a flaming fire.
Ver. 6. For they have made ready their hearts like an oven] As an oven red-hot is ready to bake whatsoever is cast into it, so are wicked men's hearts, heated from hell, prepared for any evil purpose or practice that the devil shall suggest (ad male cogitandum, Pagnin., ad pessima facinora, Tigur.); but especially to lie in wait for blood, and to hunt every man his brother with a net, Micah 7:2. David complains of some that lay in wait for his soul, Psalms 59:8, that Satanically hated him, Psalms 38:20; Psalms 7:13; Psalms 109:4; Psalms 109:6; Psalms 109:20; Psalms 109:29; that sought his soul to destroy it; not his life only, but his soul too; as that monster of Milan did, that made his adversary first forswear Christ in hope of life, and then, stabbing him to the heart, said, Now go thy ways soul and body to the devil; and as the Papists dealt by John Huss and Jerome of Prague, to whom they denied a confessor, which he required, after the manner of those times, to fit him for heaven; and for John Huss, after they had burnt him, how despitefully did they beat his heart (which was left untouched by the fire) with their staves! Besides that the bishops, when they put the triple crown of paper (painted with ugly devils on it) on his head, they said, Now we commit thy soul to the devil. Did not these men's hearts burn like an oven with hellish rage and cruelty?
Their baker sleepeth all the night] Concoquens illa, scilicet corda, so Vatabius. He that concocteth or worketh their hearts, that is, the devil, as some interpret it, or evil concupiscence, as others; tota nocte protrahitur furor eorum, so the Chaldee; their rage is deferred, or drawn out to the length all night long, till in the morning, i.e. at a convenient season, it break out and bestir itself. A metaphor from a baker, who casting fire into the oven with good store of lasting fuel, lets it burn all night and sleeps securely; as knowing that he shall find it thoroughly hot in the morning. Those scorners in the former verse, by being overly familiar with their drunken king, came not only to fight him for his base behaviours, but also to conspire against him, and to plot his death; wherein their heart is the oven, ambition the fire, treason the flame of that fire, Satan, that old manslayer, the baker; who, though he make as if he slept all night, yet by the morning he hath set his agents, the traitors, to work (either by secret treacheries or open seditions) to do as in the next verse, and as is to be seen, 2 Kings 15:10; 2 Kings 15:14; 2Ki 15:25; 2 Kings 15:30 .