Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.
Ver. 13. Gird yourselves and lament, ye priests] Be you priest, and first in the practice of humiliation: be you an example of the believers in word, in conversation, &c., 1 Timothy 4:12, a pattern of piety, τυπος. Si vis ne flere, &c. If others shall lament, you must begin to them; and say, as Abimolech did to his soldiers, "What ye have seen me do, make haste and do likewise," Judges 9:48; and as St Paul doth to his Philippians, "Those things which ye have both learned and received, and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you," Philippians 4:9 .
For the meat offering and the drink offering, &c.] Your maintenance is substracted, and (that which should more affect you) the sacred service of God is intermitted, and so the glory is departed, the daily sacrifice is neglected, which the Jews counted and called the abomination of desolation. Phineas's wife was not without natural affection, 1 Samuel 4:21, but her spiritual affections prevailed. Therefore in the declaration of her sorrow, that of her father-in-law and husband is but once named; but twice it came in, The glory is departed, The glory is departed. All comforts are but Ichabods to a good heart without the ordinances: without the sincere milk of the word God's new-born babes cannot be quitted. I could not live in paradise without the word (said Luther), as with the word I could easily live in hell itself.