And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth [it] with good will at your hand.
Ver. 13. And this have ye done again] Or, in the second place: q.d. Not content to have married strange wives, ye have brought them in to your lawful wives, to their intolerable vexation; so adding this sin to the former, as a greater to the less. This is still the guise of graceless men, to add drunkenness to thirst, rebellion to sin, to amass and heap up one evil upon another, till wrath come upon them to the utmost. "For three transgressions, and for four, I will not turn away their punishment," Amos 1:3; that is, so long as the wicked commit one or two iniquities, I forbear them; but when it comes once to threes and fours (how much more to so many scores, hundreds, thousands, as one cipher added to a figure makes it so many tens, two so many hundreds, three so many thousands, &c.), God will bear with them no longer. Of those old Israelites it is demanded, not without great indignation on God's part, "How often did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert? Yea, they turned back and tempted God," &c. Psalms 78:40,41. Good men, if they fall once into foul practices, they fall not often. Of Judah it is expressly recorded that he knew Tamar no more. Lot indeed committed incest two nights together; but the orifice of his lust was not yet stopped by repentance. Think the same of Solomon, Samson, Jonah, &c., their acts were, as it were, continued acts; and, in the interim, little or no remorse or regret. Let us that have received mercy be admonished to sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto us, John 5:14. There is a woe to such as draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope, Isaiah 5:18. Babylon's sins in the Revelation reached up to heaven, or they were thwacked together thick and threefold one upon another, Revelation 18:5, there was a concatenation or a continued series of them; therefore she fell surely and suddenly. When wickedness is once ripe in the field God will not let it shed to grow again; but cuts it up by a just and seasonable vengeance.
Covering the altar of the Lord with tears] That is, You caused your poor wives, when they should have been cheerful in God's service, as 1 Samuel 1:10, and in many other places it was required of the Israelites to rejoice whensoever they appeared before the Lord. Earthly princes love not the company of mourners, Esther 4:4, to cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, to throw themselves, blubbered and swollen with tears, upon the altar, which was a profanation of it; so that God regarded not the offering any more. It were happy if we could be so affected with our unkindness to Christ, our Husband, that we could cover his table, when we come to it, with our tears. How should the Lord regard our service so much the more! how should it be unto him as music upon the waters, far more harmonious! What a gracious respect had he to the weeping women that followed him to the cross! and what an honour was that to one of them (Mary Magdalene, I mean) that she had the first sight of the revived Phoenix, whom she held fast by those feet that she had once washed with her tears, and that had now lately trod upon the lion and adder Psalms 91:13. It was appointed by Moses' law that the bondwoman should bewail her father and mother a full month before she might become an Israelite's wife, Deuteronomy 21:13. We, that are strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, as we cannot be presented a chaste virgin to Christ, but as weeping over him that bled over us, so we never please him better than when we weep over our tears (Ipsae lachrymae sunt lachrymabiles), sigh over our sobs, mourn over our griefs, as not proportionable to our miscarriages. But to return to the text; the Jews, as they are noted for a nation overmuch effeminate, and given to women, as they say, so, when they have satisfied their lust, and served their own turns, they are as willing to be rid of them as Amnon was of Tamar. Hence those many cautions in the law to put bounds to their petulance; and that political permission of a divorce, for the relief of the poor despised woman, lest she should come to a mischief, by the hatred of the churl her husband, Deuteronomy 22:18; Deuteronomy 22:14; Deuteronomy 24:3. At this day they look upon women as not having so divine a soul as men, but are of a lower creation, made only for the propagation and pleasure of man. They use them as their drudges, lay upon them with their unmanly fists, are ready to cut out their tongues (as the Welshmen dealt by their French wives, lest they should corrupt the language of their children), put them away upon every slight occasion, covering that violence with the garment of the law, as Malachi 2:16. Or if they kept them, they took other wives to them, to vex them, and to make them to fret, 1 Samuel 1:6, or (as the word there signifies) to thunder; not only tabering upon their breasts, with the voice of doves (as Nahum's expression is, Nah 2:7), but filling the air, yea, covering the altar (as it is here) with their laments and lowings, flectu et mugitu (so the Vulgate rendereth), for their husbands' harshness, and their concubines' insolencies and indignities: Lamentis gemituque et foemineo ululatu Tecta fremunt (Virg. Aeneid). Jerome tells us that these returned captives slighted their old wives brought with them from Babylon (as being by that tedious journey become infirm and deformed), and matched with strangers, who were fresh, fair, rich, &c.; this he gathers out of Ezra 9:1,15; Ezra 10:1,44, whereas they should rather have nourished and cherished them as their own flesh, Ephesians 5:29, they should have handled them gently, because of their weakness, as so many crystal glasses. They should have given them all lawful content, as Abraham did Sarah, his faithful fellow traveller. They should have given all honour unto them, saith St Peter, 1 Peter 3:7; and why? Mark his many reasons. 1. They are the weaker vessels, and are, therefore, to be handled with all tenderness. Some translate it the weaker instrument; and (as Luther speaks of it) as a knife with a tender edge men will not cut stones, brass, or iron with, so here. 2. They are heirs together of the grace of life, that is, of the life of grace, and of glory too; for souls have no sexes, and as every one is in Christ, all are equal, so that the husband is bound, in this respect, to make his wife's yoke as easy as may be, since she draws even with him, though on the left side. 3. That your prayers be not hindered, as they will be, where there is not so much coniugium wedlock as coniurgium. quarrelling. How can they pray together comfortably that live so discontentedly? How can they bring their gift to that altar that is covered with the tears and moans of their justly aggrieved and abused wives? Or, if they do, will God regard their offering any more, or receive it with good will at their hands? Will not the tears and groans of their distressed wives (who yet hold out their devotion, and will not be hindered by their just grief from praying to God and pouring out their souls before him) move God more than their sacrifices can do? Especially if they bring them with a wicked mind, as Solomon hath it, Proverbs 21:27; and as Lyra maketh it to be the sense of this text; Ye have covered the altar of the Lord with tears, &c., but he regardeth not the offering any more, &c., that is (saith Lyra, and he hath it from Chrysostom), you are resolved to retain your idolatrous wives, though God have declared against it; and that ye may expiate this wickedness, and make amends by your good deeds for your bad, you run to the temple, and there, with many tears and groans, you beg pardon. But all in vain, because you have no purpose at all to break off your sins, but will needs persist in your unlawful marriages. See Trapp on " Mal 3:16 "