My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations.
Ver. 17. My God will cast them away] My God, not their God, for they are castaways and apostates; see the like, 1 John 5:17, and learn to stick to God the closer when others start from him; and to secure our own interest in a general defection, by siding with God, and subscribing, as here the prophet doth, to his perfect righteousness in the rejection and destruction of reprobates.
Will cast them away] With disdain and detestation, as vile and execrable. He will do it, saith the prophet here, not without a great deal of grief, as finding that God was fully resolved, and would not alter. The eternity of Israel will not lie, nor repent, 1 Samuel 15:29; for he is not a man, that he should repent, saith Samuel to Saul, that castaway; and it is very dreadful; as indeed it is for any wicked men to have such as have interest in God to declare against them; since "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," Psalms 25:14, and their sentence is not to be slighted. God's messengers especially, out of their acquaintance with their Master's proceedings, can foresee and foretell a punishment.
Because they did not hearken unto him] Haec notabilis est sententia, This is a notable sentence, saith Luther upon the text; and worthy to be written upon all our walls and windows. Death came into the world by the ear, so must life; for it is, Hear, and your souls shall live; and they that will not hear the instruction of life are doomed to destruction, as were Eli's sons, 1 Samuel 2:25, and Amaziab, 2 Chronicles 25:16. A heavy ear is a singular judgment, Isaiah 6:10, an uncircumcised ear a forerunner of ruin, Jeremiah 6:10,11. Oh pray God to pull off that filthy foreskin, and to give us a hearing ear (that way to wisdom), an understanding heart, such as Solomon begged, 1 Kings 3:9. Pray that he would bore our ears, as Psalms 40:6, and make the bore big enough, that we may not only hear, but hearken; listen as for life. "Hear and give ear, be not proud, for the Lord hath spoken it," Jeremiah 13:15 : when God hath spoken once let us hear it twice, as David did, Psalms 62:11; he preached over the sermon again to himself at home. We must do with the word's directions, as we do with oil to a stiff joint; rub and chafe them on our hearts by deep and frequent meditation and prayer; lest else we hear with these in the text,
Because they did not hearken unto him, they shall be wanderers among the nations] Heb. Nodedim: Cain's curse shall befall them. "A fugitive and a vagabond shall I be upon the earth," Genesis 4:12; but could not wander so wide as to miss hell, nor flee so far as from his own evil conscience. Lo, this is the case of these wandering Jews, a dejected and despised nation, exiled out of the world by a common consent of all people, till God turn again their captivity as the streams in the south, till he gather the outcasts of Israel.