How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.
Ver. 21. How is the faithful city.] Here beginneth, as some think, a new sermon; and it beginneth, as Jeremiah's Lamentations do, with an Ecack, "How!" a particle of admiration mixed with grief a - q.d., Proh pudor! proh dolor! Oh shameful! oh doleful! What a strange business is this! and how unworthily is this matter carried! Here is a city so altered that ye can scarce know her to be the same. Ye may seek Jerusalem in Jerusalem and not find her; tota est iam Roma lupanar. b See Ezekiel 16:15; Ezekiel 16:23; Ezekiel 23:3,21 .
Become an harlot?] In meretricem; not a privy harlot only, but a prostituted harlot, a very prostibulum meretrix meretricissima, utpote quae cubile dilatavit Isa 57:3 Tibias devaricavit Eze 16:28 Such a trite harlot is the great whore of Babylon at this day, whose faithfulness was once famous all the world over. Rom 1:8 But now, O quantum haec Niobe! One of her own sons once complained that of gold she was become silver, of silver brass, and that she was ready to degenerate into dirt, and worse. c
It was full of judgment.] Top full. Sad that it was so. Fuimus Troes. It is a misery to have been happy.
Righteousness lodged there.] Not in Melchizedek's days only, who was king of righteousness, according to his name, and king also of Salem, afterwards called Jerusalem, but also in the reigns of David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, and other good princes. But now no such matter - nay, the contrary, like as the Prince of Orange his country is fertile of all fruits save oranges, whence the French proverb, En Orenge it n'y a point de oranges. d
But now murderers.] Hierapolis was become a very Poneropolis, the city of God a den of thieves, or, as the Papists maliciously say of Geneva, a professed sanctuary of roguery. By murderers here may be meant persecutors of the pious, and oppressors of the poor man, whose livelihood is his life. Mark 12:40 Luk 8:43 A poor man in his house is like a snail in his shell; crush that, and you kill him.
a Nota et admirantis, et deplorantis.
b Mantuan.
c Ex aurea factam argenteam, ex argentea ferream, ex ferrea terream, superesse ut in stercus abiret. - Theod.
d Urias Augustinianus, circa A.D. 1414.