Ye have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied [him]? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil [is] good in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them; or, Where [is] the God of judgment?
Ver. 17. Ye have wearied the Lord with your words] Laborare fecistis Dominum, so the Vulgate renders it. Ye have put the Lord to pain, as it were; ye have even tired out his patience, while ye have made him to serve with your sins, and have wearied him with your iniquities, Isaiah 43:24 "I have long time held my peace; I have been still and refrained myself," saith the Lord: "now will I cry like a travailing woman," that hath long time bitten in her pain, I will destroy and devour at once, Isaiah 42:14. God can hear and forbear as well as any other: Who is a God like unto thee for this? saith Micah, Micah 7:17. Were the most patient man upon earth in God's stead, but for a very short time, to see and hear the provocations and indignities daily done unto him by the sinful sons of men, he would soon be weary of it, he would quickly make a short work upon the earth, Romans 9:28. It would trouble his patience to spread out his hands all day long to a rebellious people, Isaiah 65:2, to give forty days' respite to Nineveh, that bloody city, full of lies and robbery, Nahum 3:1, to be grieved forty years long with a perverse people, and to suffer their evil manners in the wilderness, Acts 13:18, to bear four hundred years with those wretched Amorites, who had filled the land from one end to the other with their abominable uncleannesses, Ezra 9:11. In the fourth chapter of Ezekiel God is brought in as lying upon his left side for three hundred and ninety years, Ezekiel 4:5,6; a long while to lie on one side, without turning on the other, and all to set forth his longsufferance. Our text tells us that he is patient, even ad defatigationem usque, up the point of being worn out toward the wicked; he bears till he can bear no longer. See the like Romans 9:22, and the reason, Romans 2:4, and the ill use that is made of it, Ecclesiastes 8:11,13, till they tire out him that is indefatigable, Jeremiah 15:6, and made him weary of repenting. But is this a safe course they take? Do they provoke the Lord to wrath? Are they stronger than he? 1 Corinthians 10:22 "Hear ye now, O house of David: Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but ye will weary my God also?" Isaiah 7:13. Will he not put an end to his abused patience, that justice, justice (as Moses hath it), actual and active justice, may take place? Deuteronomy 16:20. God in Ezekiel is said to sit upon a throne, to show his slowness; but this throne hath wings, to show his swiftness to come, if need require. His patience passeth along as a pleasant river. But if men stop the course of it by their blasphemies and contumelies, as here, and press in with their provocations, as a cart that is leaden with sheaves, Amos 2:13, God will surely have his full blow at them, Nahum 1:2; Nah 1:6 Romans 2:4 Hebrews 12:29 .
With your words] That is, with your continual contentions and quibblings; or with those ensuing words, blasphemous enough, and atheistic; together with your bold justification of them; "yet ye say, Wherein," &c.
When ye say, Every one that doth evil, &c.] As if they should say, God punisheth not, but prospereth the wicked; therefore he loveth and favoureth them above better men. Job, Jeremiah, and David were once, for a fit, in the same error, but soon recanted it when once the waters of the sanctuary had cured their eyesight, Psalms 73:17, for such are sand blind, and cannot see far off, 2 Peter 1:9 .
Or, Where is the God of judgment] q.d. Nowhere; either there is no God, or, at least, not a God of that exact, precise, impartial judgment, such an emphasis there is in the Heb. Diagoras turned atheist, because his adversary that had robbed him was not presently thunderstruck (Corn. a Lapide). The like is recorded of Porphyry, Lucian, Averroes, and others. See Trapp on " Mal 3:14 " See Trapp on " Mal 3:14 "