If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay [it] to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay [it] to heart.
Ver. 2. If ye will not hear] That your souls may live, Isaiah 55:3, but forbear, and so show yourselves a rebellious house, Ezekiel 2:8, so adding rebellion to your sin. If you will needs resemble the deaf adder, which, although by spitting out his poison he might renew his age, stoppeth his ears by applying one to the earth, and covering the other with his tail, lest he should hear the voice of the charmer. Or, if ye do hear with that gristle that grows upon your head only,
And will not lay it to heart] Heb. Upon your heart, as a weight to keep it down from rising in rebellion against the Lord. If you esteem my command a light matter, and, instead of pondering it in your hearts with Mary, cast it behind your backs, Psalms 51:17, or suffer it to run through you as water runs through a riven vessel, Hebrews 2:4. If, thirdly, you will not give glory unto my name, by confessing your sins, Joshua 8:19 (so submitting to my justice, and imploring my mercy, which will make much to my glory), and redressing your ways, Psalms 50:23, by breaking off your sins, and bearing much fruit, John 15:8, studying mine ends more than your own, and drowning all self-respects in my glory. If you will not observe and fulfil these three afore mentioned conditions of exemption,
I will even send a curse upon you] That evil angel of mine, that shall bring with him fierceness of anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble, Psalms 78:49. The Vulgate translation renders it, I will even send poverty upon you; a curse well suiting with their covetousness, and agreeable to that threatened by another prophet: "As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right" (as these priests had done), "shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end be a fool," Jeremiah 17:11. A poor fool God will soon make of the covetous wretch, and reduce him to extreme want; than the which he knows no greater hell, no curse comparable. But the original is more general, I will execrate you, or pronounce a curse against you. Howbeit, non nisi coactus, no otherwise than as compelled to it; as that emperor said, laying his hand upon his mouth for a good while before he would pronounce sentence of death upon one that had deserved it. Histories tell us of Augustus, that it went as much against the heart with him as it did against the hair with the malefactor, when he adjudged him to condign punishment. Vespasian wept over those he sentenced. Nero, in his first five years, being to sign a warrant for execution of certain malefactors, said, O utinam literas nescirem, O that I could not write! Our King Edward VI could not be persuaded by all his Council to put his hand to a warrant for the burning of one Joan Butcher, that had well deserved it. Our gracious God might well say, As I live, I delight not in the death of sinners, but rather would they should convert and live, Ezekiel 33:11; why else doth he here, in threatening a curse, interpose a condition for repentance? why doth he warn before he wound, and pre-admonish before he punish? Well might the heathen historian say, God loves to forewarn, φιλει ο θεος, προσημαινειν (Herodot.). Well might that father say, Minatur Deus ut non puniat: God therefore menaceth misery that he may not inflict it. And another, Ideo prolata est sententia, ut non fiat: The sentence is therefore pronounced that it may not be executed. Witness that we read Amos 4:12 "Therefore thus will I do unto thee." Thus? how? He nameth not how, that they may fear the utmost, as Ribera noteth, and yet he addeth, "Because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel" Surely, as a woman brings not forth without pain; and as a bee, usually, stings not till much provoked; so neither doth God curse his creature till there be no other remedy, 2 Chronicles 36:16. And then, Patientia laesa fit furor; abused mercy turns into fury. If men will not accept the conditions of peace, though never so fair and reasonable, as here, but pervert his mercies to wantonness, his patience to presumption, he will not always bear with their evil manners; but, repenting him of his kindness so cast away upon those that prized it not, as David repented of the good he had done unworthy Nabal, he will make them know the worth of his blessings by the want of them, 1 Samuel 25:21 .
I will curse your blessings] Saith he here; I will recover mine own and be gone, as Hosea 2:9. I will cut off the meat from their mouths, and blast all your hopes of abundance, and destroy you after that I had done you good, Joshua 24:20. Thus God dealt by his unfruitful vineyard, Isaiah 5:5, he pulled up the hedges and let in the wild boar. Thus also he dealt by the unprofitable servant; he took away his talent, and turned him over to the tormentor. And thus he deals by many today, in whom it is no hard matter to observe a wane and decay of their gifts and abilities, upon their disuse or misuse thereof. How many have we that are woefully fallen from the affections of prayer they were wont to find and express! how many idle and therefore evil ministers, rejected by God, and laid aside, as so many broken vessels; while he causeth the night to come upon their divination, puts out their right eyes and dries up their right arms, Zechariah 11:17; till at length they may say, with Zedekiah. When did the spirit depart from me? "Woe to me, for I am spoiled," Jeremiah 4:13. And in very deed what should a prince do but take a sword away from a rebel? what should a mother do, but snatch away the meat from the child that mars it? And what can God do less than take away his grain, wine, and wool, from those that not only own him to it, but go after other sweethearts with it? Hosea 2:5; Hosea 2:9 .
Yea, I have cursed them already] For a pledge of more malediction. For as in blessings, every former is a pledge of a future; so in curses. As one cloud follows another till the sun disperse them; so doth one curse succeed another till repentance remove them. No sooner doth that rainbow appear in our hearts, but God, remembering his covenant, clears up our coasts, and lifteth up the light of his countenance upon us. Take the bark from the tree, and the sap can never find its way to the branches. Take sin from the soul, and God will soon be reconciled. But if ye walk contrary unto me, I will punish you yet seven times more, and seven times, and seven to that, Leviticus 26:24, till I have dashed you in pieces; as Dagon never left falling before the ark till his neck was broken. Sin doth as naturally draw and suck curses to it as the loadstone doth iron, or turpentine fire. The Chaldee and the Vulgate make these words but a repetition of the former; for they read the text thus: I will curse your blessings, and I will curse them; to intimate his peremptoriness in the thing, and that he was unchangeably resolved upon it. Now when God will do a thing, who shall hinder it? Nature may be resisted and hindered in its course; when the fire burnt not the three worthies, when the sun stood still in heaven, yea, went backwards. Men and devils, though never so potent, may want of their will, and be crossed in their designs and desires. But if God will have this or that to be done, there is no gainstanding him. If he have a mind to bless his people, they shall be blessed. If he will have pity for his own name's sake, which the house of Israel had profaned, Ezekiel 36:21; if he will come in with his Non obstante, Nevertheless he saved them, &c., and dealt with his servants not according to his ordinary rule, but according to his prerogative, who shall contradict him? In like sort, if he will redouble his strokes upon his enemies, and not only curse them, but curse them bitterly, as the angel did Meroz, who can hinder or object against his proceeding in that behalf? Judges 5:23. His judgments are sometimes secret, but always just; and if he once say, I will curse, yea, that I will, there is as little hope of altering him as there was of Pilate, when he had once pronounced, what I have written I have written, it shall surely stand.
Because ye do not lay it to heart] As he had repeated their curse, so he doth here their sin; instancing in that branch of it that most offended him; and that was their stupidity and senselessness, either of their sin or danger. This is a God provoking evil, often complained about, but especially when it proceeds from presumption, as Deu 29:19 Isa 22:12-14 Ezekiel 24:13. The Lord cannot satisfy himself in threatening such; as if the very naming of it had enraged his jealousy; neither is he more absolute in threatening than he will be resolute in punishing.