And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.
Ver. 14. And whosoever shall not receive you] Two sure signs of reprobate goats: 1. Not to receive Christ's ministers to house and harbour, accounting themselves happy in such an entertainment. 2. Not to hear their words. The most good is done by God's ministers commonly at first coming. Then some receive the word with admiration, others are daily more and more hardened: as fish, though fearful, stir not at the great noise of the sea, whereunto they are accustomed; and as birds that build in a belfry startle not at the tolling of the bell.
Shake off the dust of your feet] In token that you sought not theirs but them, and that you will not carry away so much as any of their accursed dust; and that you will not have any communion at all with them, wait no longer upon them; that the dust of those feet (that should have been beautiful) shall be fatal and feral to them; that God shall henceforward beat them here as small as dust with his heavy judgments, as with an iron mace, Psalms 2:9; and that hereafter he shall shake them off as dust, when they come to him for salvation at the last judgment.