My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him [for] the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.
Ver. 5. My covenant was with him of life and peace] Now God's covenant (saith an expositor here) is of four sorts: 1. General, made with all creatures, Genesis 9:22. With the Church in general, Genesis 17:23. With the Church of the elect, Jeremiah 32:33 Jeremiah 32:4. With some particulars of some special graces, as here with Levi, of "life and peace." So then to ministers, above others, hath the Lord bound himself by special covenant to be their mighty protector and rewarder; to give them life and peace that is, long life and prosperous. See Numbers 25:12,13. Life of itself, though pestered with many miseries, is a sweet mercy, and highly to be prized. "Better is a living dog than a dead lion," Ecclesiastes 9:4 "And why is a living man sorrowful, a man for the punishment of his sins?" Lamentations 3:39. As who should say, let a man suffer never so much, yet if he be suffered to live he hath cause to be contented. It is the Lord's mercy he is not consumed. When Baruk sought great things for himself, Jeremiah tells him he may be glad (in those dear years of life, when the arrows of death came so thick whisking by him) that he had his "life for a prey," Jeremiah 45:5. Jacob took more comfort of his son Joseph's life than of his honour. "Joseph is yet alive," &c., Genesis 45:26. Quis vitam non vult? saith Austin, Who is it that desires not life? When David moveth the question, "What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good?" Austin brings in every man answering I do, and I do. Long, life and happy days is every man's desire. If God give these blessings to those that are graceless, it is by virtue of a providence only, and not of a promise, and that is nothing so comfortable. Life in God's displeasure is worse than death, said that martyr. If wicked men live long, it is that they may make up the measure of their sins; and by heaping up sin, increase their torment. If godly men die soon, God taketh them away from the evil to come: as when there is a fire in a house or town men secure their jewels: and though they fall in wars, yet they die in peace, as good Josiah did, 2 Chronicles 34:28, who also in brevi vitro spatio tempora virtutum multa replevit, lived quickly, lived apace, lived long in a little time (Hieron.). For life consists in action, Isaiah 38:15,16. The Hebrews call running water living water. Now God's faithful ministers, if they work hard, and so wear out themselves to do good to others (as a lamp wasteth itself to give light, or as that herb mentioned by Pliny, that cures the patient but rots the hand that administereth it), like clouds, they sweat themselves to death to bring souls to God, yet shall they be sure to find it a blessed way of dying: they shall, mori vitaliter, die to live for ever. God will not send any of his own to bed till they have done their work. The two witnesses could not be slain till their testimony was finished. No malice of man can antedate their ends a minute. "The days of mourning for my father will come," said Esau, "and then I will kill my brother Jacob," Genesis 27:41. Here Esau, that rough reprobate, threateneth his father also, as Luther conceiveth. For it is as if he should have said, I will be avenged by being the death of my brother; though it be to the breaking of my father's heart. But what is the proverb? Threatened folk live long; for even Isaac, who died sooner, lived over forty years, beyond, this. "My times are in thy hand," saith David; and that is a safe hand. And blessed be God that Christ liveth and reigneth, alioqui totus desperassem, or else I had been in ill case, said Miconius in a letter of his to Calvin. Ministers are stars in Christ's right hand, and it will be hard pulling them thence. They must carry their lives in their hands, and be ready to lay them down when it may be for the glory of their Master, but they shall be sure not to die (whether by a natural or by a violent death) till the best time; not till that time when, if they were but rightly informed, they would desire to die. But whether their death be a burnt offering of martyrdom or a peace offering (whether they die in their beds, as Elisha, or be carried to heaven in a fiery chariot, as Elijah), let it be a freewill offering, and then it shall be a sweet sacrifice to him who hath covenanted with them for life and peace. They shall by death, as by a door of hope, enter into peace, they shall rest in their beds, Isaiah 57:2, yea, in Abraham's bosom: and as "the sleep of the labouring man is sweet unto him, whether he eat little or much," Ecclesiastes 5:12; so heaven shall be so much the more heaven to such as have here had their purgatory. Mark the upright man, saith holy David, and behold the just, for how troublesome soever his beginning and middle is, "the end of that man is peace," Psalms 37:37 .
And I gave them to him] Here is the performance of God's covenant to Levi and his posterity. God doth not pay his promises with fair words only, as Sertorius is said to do neither is he like Antigonus Dωσων, (ignominiously so called, because) forward in promising, slack in performing. But as he hath hitherto kept promise with nights and days, Jeremiah 33:20; Jeremiah 33:25, that one should succeed the other, so much more doth he keep promise with his people; for as his love moved him to promise, so his truth bindeth him to perform. See both, these together, 2 Samuel 7:21 "For thy word's sake, and according to thine own heart, hast thou done all these things." "According to thine own heart," that is, of thine own mere motion; out of pure and unexcited love thou didst give thy word and promise; and "for thy word's sake hast thou performed it." There was nothing in Aaron or his seed that God should make his special covenant with him of life and peace. His rod was as dry and dead as any of the rest till God made it to blossom. But when God once passed his promise, and so made himself a voluntary debtor, he failed not to perform it to him and his. Aaron himself lived one hundred and three years, Phinehas three hundred, as it is thought, and as some chronologers do observe. Joshua, the son of Josedech, lived, according to Helvieus, one hundred and ten years in the office of the high priesthood.
To these and others was expressly fulfilled a covenant of life and peace; and God would have been ready to have performed it to these to whom Malachi prophesieth, had not themselves hindered. For "they like men," or like Adam, "transgressed the covenant," Hosea 6:7; or (as Junius and Tremellius read it), not tanquam homines, but tanquam hominis, they made no more of breaking it than if they had had to do with dust and ashes like themselves, and not with the great God. "Remember them, O my God," saith good Nehemiah concerning these covenant breakers, "because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites," Nehemiah 13:29 .
For the fear wherewith he feared me, &c.] That is, the good priests did so, the bad did otherwise; but God reckons of men by their righteousness, and this was the restipulation, or the condition on the priest's part performed; for in a covenant both parties undertake to do somewhat. As in the general covenant of grace, God promiseth to be the God of his people, that is, a universal good, all-sufficient, satisfactory, and every way proportionable and fitting to their souls. And they (interchangeably) promise to be his people; that is, to bestow themselves wholly upon him with highest estimation, most vigorous affections, and utmost endeavours, giving up their names and hearts to the profession of his truth. So that when he cries out, Who is on my side? Who? one says, I am the Lord's; another calls himself by the name of Jacob, another subscribes, &c., Isaiah 44:5. Likewise in this particular covenant with the tribe of Levi, God promised them life and peace; and they assured him of fear and humility. Fear is an affection of the soul shrinking in itself from some imminent evil. Hereof there three sorts, natural, carnal, and spiritual.
The first is not to be disliked, if it do not degenerate into the second. The next is a bast fear of the creature more than of the Creator, who is God blessed for ever. The third is nothing else but an awful respect to the Divine majesty. Spiritual fear we called it in respect, 1. Of the author of it, God's Holy Spirit, called therefore, A Spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord. 2. Of the object of it, The Father of Spirits, who is therefore, by an appellative proper, called fear, Psalms 76:11 Psalms 76:3. Of the effect, which is to spiritualize both us and our services; and was therefore fitly vowed to God by those of the spirituality that stood before him continually, and were to be exact in their whole deportment, at their peril; God is of purer eyes than to behold evil. He cannot look on iniquity in any, Habakkuk 1:13. Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that call upon his name: They called upon the Lord, and he answered them; he forgave their iniquities; howbeit he took vengeance on their inventions, Psalms 99:8. He met Moses in the inn, and had much ado to forbear killing him, Exodus 4:24. And for Aaron, when (together with Miriam) he murmured against Moses, and Miriam was thereupon smitten with leprosy, Aaron was spared, not so much for the honour of the priesthood, Dια το της ιεροσυνης αξιωμα, as Chrysostom gives the reason, but because of the fear wherewith he feared the Lord, and his humiliation that followed upon that fear.
For he was afraid before God's name] Or, as others better render this text, Propter nomen meum humiliatus est, He was amazed, frightened, conterebatur, consternebatur, humbled because of my name, he withdrew himself (so some render it), or, threw himself out of doors, as Peter did into a lone place, where he might souse himself in the salt tears of godly sorrow, επιβαλων, Mark 14:72. Or, he shrunk and shrivelled up, and so testifieth the trouble of his mind by the horror of his body. Horripilatus est, his heart fell down, his hair stood upright. See Psalms 119:53; Psalms 120:1,7. His humiliation was deep and downright, soaking and sorrowing his heart, Psalms 73:21. The word here used is passive, but Levi's humiliation was active; he was not humbled only, but humble; low, but lowly; he knew that no sacrifice could be accepted but that which was laid on the low altar of a contrite heart, which sanctifies the sacrifice.