Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
Ver. 2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth.] Exordium patheticum! Moses-like, he calleth heaven and earth, brutas illas mutasque creaturas, to record against God's rebels, whose stupendous stupidity is hereby taxed. Deuteronomy 4:26 ; Deuteronomy 30:19 ; Deu 31:28 Heaven and earth do hear and obey God's voice, for "they are all his servants," Psa 119:91 keeping their constant course. Only man, that great heteroclite, a breaketh order, and is therefore worse than other creatures, because he should be better.
For the Lord hath spoken it.] So Jeremiah 13:15, "Hear and give ear; be not proud: for the Lord hath spoken it." Jehovah, whose voice "shaketh not the earth only, but the heavens also," Heb 12:26 Psa 104:32 at whose dreadful presence mountains melt, rocks rend asunder, and the whole fabric of heaven and earth is astonished, horribly afraid, and very desolate; Jer 2:12 this great Jehovah - whose name is great among the heathen. Mal 1:11 The Pythagoreans used to swear by τετρακτην, Quaternity, the name Jehovah consisting of four letters in the Hebrew, which also they called πηγην αεναου φυσεως, the fountain of eternity - Aphihu, even he hath spoken, or ‘is about to speak' - scil., by my mouth and ministry. b "Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not: fear ye not me? saith Jehovah. Will ye not tremble at my presence?" &c. Jer 5:21-22 "Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind, that ye may see." Isa 42:18 Thus must ministers preach to the conscience, cut to the quick, rouse up themselves and wrestle with their hearers, goring their very souls with smarting pain, while they speak "as the oracles of God," 1Pe 4:11 with all gravity and authority.
I have nourished and brought up children.] Or, Advanced, exalted them. Brevicula verba, sed causa querulandi maxima; a short but sharp contest. c God had adopted, educated, and advanced the people of Israel; but "Jesurun waxed fat, and kicked," as young mulets, when they have sucked, lift up the heel and kick the dam's dugs, as hawks when fully fed forget their master.
And they have rebelled against me.] Or, Transgressed, blasphemed. Rebellion is a kind of blasphemy, Numbers 15:30,31 Eze 20:27 and unthankfulness is, as one saith, an accumulative sin, a voluminous wickedness. Many sins are bound up in it, as Cicero saith of parricide. Solon would make no law against parricide, because he thought none would be so vile as to commit it. Lycurgus would make no law against ingratitude for like reason.
a A person that deviates from the ordinary rule; an ‘anomaly'.
b Lingua mea est calamus S.S. et guttur meum est tuba divino inflata et clangens anhelitu. - Deut. xxxii. 15.
c Plato Aristotelem vocabat mulum.