When he slew them, then they sought him: and they returned and enquired early after God.
Ver. 34. When he slew them, then they sought him] Fictis scilicet, quibusdam et fucatis pollicitationabus, with a few dissembled devotions. So many now, when deadly, sick, will be wondrous good. Nuper me amici cuiusdam languor admonuit, optimos esse nos dum infirmi sumus (Plin. eph 26, 1. 7). As iron is very soft and malleable while in the fire, but soon after returneth to its former hardness; so many, while afflicted, seem very well affected, but afterwards soon show what they are. William Rufus, in a fit of sickness at Gloucester, vowed upon his recovery to see all vacancies in the Church furnished; which he did, but with so great ado as showed that, having escaped the danger, he would willingly have deceived the saint, saith the chronicler. In the sweating sickness here in England, so long as the ferventness of the plague lasted there was crying, Peccavi, peccavi, I have sinned, I have sinned, the ministers were sought for in every corner, You must come to my lord, you must come to my lady, &c.; but this lasted with many little longer than the disease; so deceitful is man's heart, and desperately wicked. Most men are nailed to the earth (saith one well), as Sisera was by Jael; and will not so much as lift up their eyes to heaven, unless it be as hogs do, who go noddling down and rooting in the earth all their life, and never look upward till, being ready to be killed, they are laid flat upon their backs and forced; so these, till wrestling with the pangs of death, they are fastened to their sick-beds, &c.
And they returned] But they gave but the half turn, they turned not even unto God with all their heart, as Joel 2:12 .
And inquired early after God] Heb. Manicabant sive aurorizabant Deum, aurora velut anticipata; they were up and at it by peep of day.