He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast [it] away; the branches thereof are made white.
Ver. 7. He hath laid my vine waste] The prophet proceeds in aggravating the calamity, that he might make the people the more sensible. There is nothing in the world more stupid and more stubborn than a drunkard. Of such it is that that saying of an ancient is often verified, Ablatus est a peccantibus timor, ne possit esse cautela, Fear is taken away from offenders, that there should be no caution against it. Here therefore let the words of the wise be as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of the assemblies. Let them so preach with Peter, that their hearers may be pricked at heart, Acts 2:37, may be galled and sawed, as it were, Acts 7:54, may startle and tremble, as Acts 24:25, may awaken out of that dead lethargy, whereinto Satan hath cast them, and recover out of his snare who are taken captive by him at his pleasure, 2 Timothy 2:26. True it is, we can hardly get men to believe that hell is so hot, or sin so heavy, or the devil so black or God so unmerciful as the preachers make him. The lion, say they, is not so terrible as he is painted; nor is our case so dangerous as is borne us in hand. Sed non pergamus exaggerare, saith Pareus here. Let God's ministers lay load upon men's sins, and set forth to the full the miseries that will fall upon them. The prophets did so for temporal (as here most graphically and to the life), shall not we much more for eternal punishments? "Oh" (saith one) "that I could get words to gore your very hearts with smarting pain; that this doctrine might be written in your flesh!"
And barked my fig tree] Take away the bark from the tree, and the sap can never find the way to the boughs. These vermin had barked the trees with their teeth, cast the bark out of their mouths upon the ground, and made the branches naked and all white as froth; so that the drunkards, deprived of their sweet draughts, were brought ad effiationem animae (as the Chaldee here expounded Chetsephah), to a yielding up of the ghost, yea, ad laqueum et restim, as the Latins, to the very halter.