Arise ye, and depart; for this [is] not [your] rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy [you], even with a sore destruction.
Ver. 10. Arise ye and depart] Veteres migrate coloni, make up your fardels and prepare for a deportation. Here is no longer being for you unless ye were better. Behold, "the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants," Leviticus 18:25 .
This is not your rest] As you falsely, fancy and vainly vaunt, binding upon the promise, but not performing the condition. It is the guile of graceless men to stuff themselves with promises, till they have made them a pillow for sin. Et sic praesumendo sperant, et sperando pereunt, they presume till they perish, as he did who died with this desperate saying in his mouth, Spes et fortuna valete, Farewell life and hope together.
Because it is polluted] sc. by your sin, which is of so sullying a nature that it defileth also the very visible heavens, which are therefore to be purged by the fire of the last day, like as those vessels that held the sin offering were either to be broken, if earthen, or to pass the fire if of better metal; they must not think to rest that let sin lie unrepented of in the conscience. But as a man that hath used himself to drink poison, at the first and second time he may do well, but the last it overcomes and destroys himself; so the next sin, though less, may set all the former to work. And as two poisons met in the stomach make a man restless, so sin and wrath, met in the conscience, raise a great garboil there. Neither must they think to dwell in God's good land that will not live by God's good laws, Isaiah 1:19 Psalms 107:39,40; they walk upon fireworks every moment ready to be blown up, "brimstone also is scattered upon their habitations," that is, the fire of God's wrath do but lightly touch it, they are suddenly consumed. Eusebius telleth us of Dioclesian, that bloody persecutor of the Church, that giving over the empire, he decreed to lead the rest of his life quietly; but he escaped not so. For after that his house was wholly consumed with lightning and a flame of fire that fell from heaven, he hiding himself for fear of the lightning, died within a little after.
It shall destroy you even with a sore destruction] Dissipatione roborata saith Calvin. Perditione praecisa, saith Tremellius. The land longs for a vomit to spue you out, and it shall do it effectually. Poison given in wine works more furiously than in water. Woe be to that people or person whom God will "destroy with a violent destruction!" This he doth not willingly, or from his heart, Lamentations 3:35, but men's sins compel him to it. Surely as many a fowl is shot with an arrow feathered from her own body, and as of the blackbird's slime is made the lime whereby he is taken; so out of the dung of men's sins doth God make his lime twigs (his judgments I mean) to take them also. Long they might rest would they but let him rest; but pollution is the forerunner of perdition.