Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
Ver. 8. Will a man rob God?] Adam pillage Elohim? frail weak man seek to supplant (so the Septuagint render it) the great and mighty God? Giant-like boldness! Cacus met with his match when he robbed Hercules. Mercury, say the poets, had a mind to steal Jupiter's thunderbolts, but dared not meddle, lest he should punish as Prometheus for stealing fire; or lest they should burn his fingers. The eagle in the fable, that stole a piece of flesh from the altar, and carried it together with a live coal, that stuck to it, to his nest, set his young and all on fire. Dionysius, that robbed his god, was cast out of his kingdom, though he was wont to boast, that he had it bound to him with chains of adamant. Belshazzar paid dearly for his bousing in the bowels of the sanctuary. Cardinal Wolsey, and five of his servants, employed by him in embezzling consecrated goods, though perhaps to better purposes, came all to fearful ends, as Scultetus noteth, and thereupon wisheth, Utinam his et similibus exemplis edocti discant homines res semel Deo consecratas timide attrectare. "It is a snare to the man that devoureth that which is holy," Proverbs 20:25. They may be compared to those who, being of a cold and phlegmatic stomach, eat hard and choleric meats; well they may please their palates, but it cannot be for their health: no more can the murdering morsels of such sacrilegious persons, as, devouring holy things, have their meat sauced and their drink spiced with the bitter wrath of God. See Job 20:23. Polanus reads the text thus, Will a man rob his gods? q.d. Will any heathen do so? did not they that worshipped idols abhor sacrilege? Was it not one of the laws of the twelve tables in Rome, Sacrum sacrove commendatum qui clepserit rapseritque, parricida esto, Let every sacrilegious person pass and be punished for a parricide? And doth not Cicero affirm those laws, that they did exceed all the libraries of the philosophers in weight and worth? Did not those old idolaters freely bestow their most precious things upon their idols, Eze 16:16-19 Exodus 32:3, yea, their very children in sacrifice to Moloch, or Saturn? 2Ki 16:3; 2 Kings 17:17; being as mad upon their idols as ever was any wicked wanton upon his harlot, lavishing out of the bag? &c. And are not our modern idolaters and Papists as bountiful to their he saints and she saints? so that their churches are not able to hold their vowed presents and memories, but that in many places, as at Loretto, Sichem, &c., they are fain to hang their cloisters and churchyards with them? Shall they in their petitions to our parliaments plead for favour and forbearance upon this ground, because their ancestors, they say, bestowed so great cost upon this land for church maintenance; and shall it be said (now that they are worthily cast out), Possidebunt Papistae, possident Rapistte, Wicked Papists had them, ungodly Rapists have them; Improprietaries, I mean, that hold by an improper title, and all others that appropriate that to them and theirs which the Almighty is invested in. This is here instanced as a capital crime, and called robbing God, as well it may; forasmuch as ministers' maintenance (being tithes) is called the Lord's, and holy to the Lord, Leviticus 27:30, because separated from man and man's use, and therefore might not be altered, Leviticus 27:28. Or if any had a mind to redeem them, they were bound to add to the price every fifth penny above the true value, Leviticus 27:31. Let all those look to this, whether impropriators, false patrons (latrones robbers rather), or others, that, either by force or fraud, rob God of his right (Nunquid homo fraudabit Deum? sic vertunt Aquila, Symmachus et Theodotion); detaining part of the due at least, as Ananias and Sapphira did; God hath a Quare Impedit against them, which one day they must make answer to.
Yet ye have robbed me] Because ye have robbed my ministers, who are in my stead, 2 Corinthians 5:20, and in whom he receiveth tithes, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth, like as did Melchisedec, as a priest and tithe taker, and type of Christ Hebrews 7:7,9. And as God is sensible of the least courtesy done to a prophet to reward it, even to a cup of cold water, Matthew 10:42 (so that he is a niggard to himself that scants his beneficence to a minister), so for those that wrong and rob them, that deny them that double honour of countenance and maintenance that he hath appointed them, and hold them to hard allowance; muzzling the ox, or giving him but straw at the best, for treading out the grain; they will dearly answer it before God, who holds all done to them as done to himself. Surely, as David could not but feel his own cheeks shaven and his own coat cut in his ambassadors; they did but carry his person to Hanun; so here. And as there was never any king so poor and weak but thought himself strong enough to revenge any wrong done or abuse offered to his ambassadors (Legati quod erant appellati superbius, Corinthum Patres vestri totius Graeciae lumen extinctum esse voluerunt. Cic. pro lege Man.); so the king of heaven will not fail to curse with a curse whole nations that forget God and forsake his Levites, Deuteronomy 12:19, it being all one to God to deal in this case against a nation or against a man only, Job 34:29 .
In tithes and offerings] He had told them before they had robbed him; or, as some read it, stabbed him as with a daggar. And here they should have confessed the action and craved pardon. But because they did nothing less, standing upon their justification (as before often), God descends to the particular wherein they robbed him, "In tithes and offerings." The original hath it, Tithes and offerings, without the particle (in); and it is as if the Lord should say, you may easily know my meaning without so many words, but that you love to contest. You cannot be ignorant that the Levites, for want of maintenance, are fled every man to his field, and so my work and worship is left undone. Good Nehemiah was sensible of it, Nehemiah 13:10, and because he knew that by this means religion itself would be soon undermined and overturned, he contended with the rulers, and made all the people pay their tithes; and this he worthily reckons among his good deeds, praying God to remember him for it, and not wipe it out Nehemiah 13:14. Hezekiah, that great reformer showed the like zeal in commanding the people that dwelt in Jerusalem to give the portion of the priests and Levites, that they might attend upon the law of the Lord (so the Vulgate), that they might be encouraged in the law of the Lord, so we read, 2 Chronicles 31:4; that is, that they might not follow their callings heavily for want of maintenance, but cheerfully bend themselves wholly to the service of the Lord. And here (as Ferus once wished for the Romish synagogue) I would we had some Moses, said he, to take away the evils of the times; non enim unum tantum vitulum sed multos habemus, for we have not one golden calf, but many; so have we of these times cause to wish we had some zealous Nehemiahs and Hezekiahs to stickle and stand for Christ's ministers, not defrauded of their due maintenance only (a sign of gasping devotion), but trampled upon by the foul feet of the basest of the people, as the filth of the world and the offscouring of all things. Tithes, they say, are Jewish; but if Melchisedec tithed Abraham by the same right whereby he blessed him, Hebrews 7:6, and if tithes by all laws of God, nature, nations, have been hallowed to God, as Junius and other modern divines allege and argue; and, lastly, if things consecrated to God's service may not be alienated, out of case of necessity, Pro 20:25 Galatians 3:15; it will appear to be otherwise. Or if tithes be Jewish, and yet ministers must have a maintenance (Christ having so ordained, 1Co 9:14), and that both honourable, 1 Timothy 5:17,18, and liberal, Galatians 6:6, how else shall they be given to hospitality? 1 Timothy 3:2 (if they be not hospitable they will be despicable); how will men satisfy their consciences in the quota pars, the particular quantity they must bestow upon them? The Scripture speaketh only of the tenth part. Sed manum de tabula. Enough of this, if not more than enough.