But I will remove far off from you the northern [army], and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.
Ver. 20. But I will remove far off from you the northern army] sc. of vermin, of those destroying creatures that came from the north. Ab Aquilone nihil boni was a proverb among this people. God promiseth here to free them of that mischief, and to disimpest the country of those noisome insects. Gratiae privativae plures sunt quam positivae, saith Gerson, God's privative favours to us are more than his positive; hence man's happiness is usually called salvation, which properly betokeneth the privative part thereof. Little do we consider or understand from how many deaths and dangers we are daily and hourly delivered. It is good to keep a catalogue of God's providences, and to transmit them to posterity, such as was that of the gunpowder plot; and before that, of the Reformation begun by Henry VIII, and carried on by his son, to the ridding of the land of those popish locusts; which Reformation, how imperfect soever, to be done by so weak and simple means, yea, by casual and cross means, against the force of so puissant and political an adversary, is that miracle, which we are in these times to look for. An outlander speaketh thus of it, Ecclesiae Anglicanae reformationem desperasset aetas praeterita, admiratur praesens, obstupescet futura (Scultet.). This was the Lord's own work, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Oh that the same Lord would be both author and finisher! and as he hath in good part cut off the names of the idols out of the land, so that they shall be no more remembered; so he would cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land, that he would send all false doctrine and heresy packing to hell from whence they came. Fiat, Fiat. Do it, do it!
And will drive him into a land barren and desolate] Or, dry and forlorn, where he shall perish for want of food. The body of this army shall be driven into the wilderness, the vanguard into the lake of Sodom toward the east; and the rearward into the Mediterranean Sea, toward the west; for the Western Ocean was hardly known to the Hebrews; as neither was it to the Romans, till the days of Julius Caesar.
And his stink shall come up, and his ill savour, &c.] se. by reason of their dead carcases covering the earth, and infecting the air. The old Hebrews understood this text concerning the destruction of the devil in the days of the Messiah. Oh that God would once destroy that firstborn of the devil, that king of locusts, Abaddon, the pope, and dung his vineyard with the dead carcases of his incurable complices, that their stink might ascend, and their ill savour come up into all men's nostrils. Matthew Paris (an ingenuous Papist), speaking of the court of Rome long since, said, Huius foetor usque ad nubes fumum teterrimum exhalabat, Her filthiness hath sent up a most noisome stench to the very clouds of heaven, as Sodom's did. And Theodorus Vrias (another of her good sons in Germany) complained, A.D. 1414, that the Church of Rome was become ex aurea argenteam, ex argentea ferream, ex ferrea terream, superesse ut in stercus abiret, of gold silver, of silver iron, of iron earth, and that she would next become of earth dung, &c. She is so already, and stinks alive worse than any carrion, rotting in its slime. Oh that God would once put into the hearts of the kings of the earth to loathe her, and burn her, for an old stinking bawd, as is prophesied they shall, Revelation 17:16 .
Because he hath done great things] Heb. he hath magnified to do, he hath made great spoil and havoc, he hath revelled in the ruins of God's poor people, and so hath hastened his own destruction, and their deliverance. The saints are many times more beholden to their enemies' outrages than to their own deserts or duties for deliverance. Some interpreters, at Castalio, Leveley, &c., understand the text of God; and render it Quia magnifice aget, for the Lord shall do great things, as it is also in the following verse; there being here the same anomaly, or change of person, as is Isaiah 22:19, "And I will drive thee from thy station and from thy state shall he pull thee down."