Wherefore have we fasted, [say they], and thou seest not? [wherefore] have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours.
Ver. 3. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not?] Here they begin to bluster, and their hypocrisy to blister out at their lips. a God, they held, was not a little beholden to them, and now also in arrears with them. For as that heathen emperor b said once of his gods, Non sic deos coluimus, ut iste nos vinceret, We have not served our gods, that they should serve us no better than to allow our enemies to get the better of us; so were these proud pretenders ready to say of God Almighty, We have better deserved than to be so served; rated by these prophets, and evil entreated by our enemies; beaten on both sides. A rich chapman, that hath had a good stock and trading, is loath to be a journeyman again; he will be trading, though it be but for pins; so we, bankrupt in Adam, yet will be doing, and think to be saved for a company of poor beggarly duties, dead prayers, formal fastings, &c., and to set off with God by our good deeds for our bad, as the Papists do, and not a few ignorants among us.
Behold, in the day of your fast.] Which is called a day of restraint, because therein you should amerce yourselves and abridge yourselves of all sorts of delights.
Ye find pleasure.] Ye find your own desire, pleasure, or will; c ye gratify your flesh, pursue your sinful lusts and purposes. Grande malum propria voluntas, saith Bernard, qua fit ut bona tua tibi bona non sint. A man's own will or pleasure proves a great evil to him many times, making his good duties (fastings, prayers, and the like) no way good to him. In vain is the body macerated, if men's lusts be not mortified.
And exact all your labours,] i.e., Your debts and dues with rigour and extremity, not considering that utmost right is utmost wrong; and that, howsoever, you should take another time for such work. Feriis iurgia amovento, brawl not on a holiday, was one of the laws of the Twelve Tables in Rome.
a Ecce non diu occultant se hypocrisis et superbia. - Oecol.
b Antonin., Philos. Referente.
c Chephets significat id quod libet.