The LORD [is] slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit [the wicked]: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds [are] the dust of his feet.
Ver. 3. The Lord is slow to anger] "Slack he is not, as some men count slackness," saith St Peter, "but longsuffering to us-ward," 2 Peter 3:9. The devil stirred up the heathen poets to persuade people that God either knew not or cared not what was done here below; that he was often from home, feasting with the Ethiopians, &c. The Epicureans also taught the like doctrine; and the Sadducees among the Jews, the Manichees among the primitive Christians, the Libertines among us. But they shall one day find that God is slow, but sure; that the higher he lifteth his hand the harder he will strike; the farther he draweth his bow the deeper will be the wound.
And great in power] Heb. Great of power, able to knock down sinners in the very act of their rebellion, and to send them packing to their place in hell. So that it is not for want of power that he is so patient. "For the Lord our God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible," Deuteronomy 10:17. But what need we go farther than the text, where he is called the strong God, great in power, and
that will not at all acquit the wicked] This is the last letter in his name (that nomen maiestativum, as Tertullian calleth it), Exodus 34:7, which he will in nowise forget; as neither must we. He will not take the wicked by the hand, saith Job, Job 8:20, nor wink at the workers of iniquity, saith David, Psalms 50:21, but will render a just recompense to every transgression and disobedience, saith Paul, Hebrews 2:2. "A God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he," Deuteronomy 32:4 .
The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm] The word Suphah, here rendered whirlwind, begins with a small Samech, ad minuendum timorem piis, ne propterea terreantur, to take off the saints from their inordinate fears, and to assure the wicked, that when the Lord cometh, imminet inde Soph finis et exitium, there shall be an end of them, and an utter destruction. "As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation," Proverbs 10:25. Or, as some read it, The righteous is the foundation of the world, as firm as the world's foundation, sc. the earth, which is immovable.
And the clouds are the dust of his feet] He walketh upon them as men do upon the dust of the earth; he maketh the clouds his chariot, and rideth upon the wings of the wind, Psalms 104:3 : see Isaiah 60:8; Isaiah 19:1. The wicked's happiness shall take its end surely and swiftly, as Ezekiel tells them in his seventh chapter, "An end is come, is come, is come."