I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and [for] my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.
Ver. 2. I will also gather all nations] That are adverse to my Church, that I may have my pennyworths of them, and do execution upon them with ease (troubling those troublers of his Israel, 2 Thessalonians 1:6, licet videantur plures et potiores), as he dealt by Jehoshaphat's enemies, 2 Chronicles 20:25, and leaving them no more place to escape than those have who are surrounded in a valley by a potent enemy, who hath gotten them into a pound, as the proverb is. And this God will do in the valley of Jehoshaphat (a valley, saith Lyra, Adrichomius, and Montanus, between Jerusalem and Mount Olivet), in the very view of the Church, that the righteous may rejoice when he seeth the vengeance, and wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. So that a man shall say, Verily, there is a reward for the righteous, see Joel 3:4; verily, he is a God that judgeth in the earth, as in the valley of divine judgment (so some render Jehoshaphat here, as if it were an appellative, Chaldeus R. Salmon, Mercer), called, Joel 3:14, the valley of decision, and the words that next follow seem to favour, "and I will plead with them" (iudicio I judge again), judicially plead with them there, for my people; which word also God useth when he foretelleth the destruction of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel. So that the valley of Jehoshaphat, saith Mercer, is the place wheresoever God shall please to punish the enemies of his people. As for that conceit of Lyra and others, who gather out of this text that this valley near Jerusalem shall be the very place where Christ shall sit to judge the world at the last day, and for confirmation allege Acts 1:11. Mercer judgeth it to be a childish conceit, and Luther asketh where all mankind shall have room to stand in so small a valley? Though others judge it not unlikely that it shall be thereabouts, because Jerusalem is in the middle and about the centre of the earth, and besides, it will be the more for the glory of Christ, to sit there as judge where he himself was judged; but it is probable he will sit in the air, near the earth, whither the elect shall be raptured up to meet the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 4:17, that the devils may be subdued and sentenced in the air, where they have ruled and played Rex, king, Ephesians 2:2, and that the wicked may be doomed on the earth, where they have offended.
For my people and for my heritage Israel] All was his, and the wrongs done to them were done to God's self, as the injury done to the subject is said to be done to the sovereign, his crown and dignity. See Act 9:4 Matthew 25:45. So that ye cannot tread upon the least toe in Christ's mystical body, but the head cries out from heaven, Why hurtest thou me? The saints' sufferings are his, Colossians 1:24, their reproach his, Hebrews 13:13. Manet compassio, etiam cum impassibilitate (Bern.). Christ retaineth still compassion, though free from personal passion; and though without feeling, yet not without fellow feeling. He doth condolere proportionate ad miseriam, as Pareus rendereth the apostle, Hebrews 5:2, condole, and that proportionably to his people's misery, μετριοπαθειν .
And for my heritage Israel] Israel, εμφατικως, saith Mercer, the people of God's purchase, that comprehend all his gettings, and are much more dear to him than Naboth's inheritance was to him. He sets them before his face for ever, Psalms 41:12, as loving to look upon them; yea, upon the very "walls of the houses where they dwell," Isaiah 49:16. They are his portion, Deuteronomy 32:9; his inheritance, Isaiah 19:25; the dearly beloved of his soul, Jeremiah 12:7; his glory, Isaiah 46:13; dear to God, though despised and dispersed in the world. He may suffer them to be Anathema secundum dici, as Bucholcer said, but not secundum esse.
Whom they have scattered among the nations] The Jewish doctors refer this to Titus and Adrian, the Roman emperors. The first carried 97,000 of them captives, saith Josephus; the second drove them utterly out of Jewry, and by proclamation, commanded them not so much as look toward that land from any tower or high mountain. But all this was for their sedition and other wickednesses. And ever since they have continued a dejected and despised people, exiled out of the world, as it were, by a common consent of nations, specially for their inexpiable guilt in murdering Christ, and persecuting his people, concerning whom, therefore, this text is to be understood, Deuteronomy 28:64. See how Christians were soon scattered abroad throughout the regions, Acts 8:1 James 1:1 1 Peter 1:1, where they are called strangers of the dispersion. Afterwards the heathen persecutors relegated and confined them to isles and mines, and scattered them into corners. So did the pope and his agents: forcing them to flee for their lives.
And parted my land] As Shalmaneser did to his new colonies; as Sennacherib also designed to do, had not God prevented him; as the pope taketh upon him to do, those countries whom he counteth heretical. He gave this land, in Henry VIII's time, primo occupaturo, to him that could first seize it. He declared John, King of Navarre, schismatic, a heretic, an enemy to the see apostolic, and gave his kingdom to the Spaniard, because he took part with the French, and would not allow the Spaniard to march through his kingdom against the French; and what work he hath lately made in the palatinate and other parts of Germany, who knows not?