Be ye not as your fathers, unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye now from your evil ways, and [from] your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor hearken unto me, saith the LORD.
Ver. 4. Be ye not as your fathers] Man is a creature apt to imitate, to be led more by his eyes than by his ears; and children think they may lawfully be as their fathers. St Peter's converts had received their vain conversation from their fathers, as it were, ex traduce, or by tradition, 1 Peter 1:18. And St Stephen tells his perverse hearers that they were as good at resisting the Holy Ghost as their fathers had been before them, Acts 7:51. They used to boast much of their ancestors, John 8:33, and to bind much upon their example and authority, Jer 44:17 Matthew 5:21. They thought they were not much to be blamed, because they did but as their fathers had done before them. The prophet therefore dehorts or rather deters them from that folly; setting forth both the crime and doom of their forefathers, whom they so much admired, and so stiffly imitated, and this he often repeateth that they might once consider it, and be wrought upon by those domestic examples.
Have cried] Loudly and lustily; according to that, "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet," Isaiah 58:1 : sic clames ut stentora vineas, A minister should be a Simon Zelotes, a son of thunder; as Basil was said to thunder in his preaching, lightning in his life; as Jerome for his vehemence was called Fulmen Ecclesiasticum, the Church's light bolt; as Harding, before his shameful apostasy, wished he could cry out against Popery as loud as the bells of Oseney; and as Farellus (that notable French preacher), whose voice when the envious monks sought to drown by ringing the bells as he was preaching at Metis, he lifted up his voice ad ravim usque; and would not suffer himself to be outroared. The saint's bell (as they called it) Pierius useth for a hieroglyphic of a preacher, who must not speak the word only, but sound it out into all the earth, Romans 10:18, not preach it only, but cry it, as the apostle's word signifieth, 2 Timothy 4:2, clangite, clamate, Jeremiah 4:5. Boate, vociferate, Matthew 3:3 (Bοωντος, boantis, vociferantis). Ministers have to do with deaf men, dead men, living carcases, walking sepulchres of themselves. Now therefore as our Saviour lifted up his voice when he said, "Lazarus, come forth"; so must they stand over men and cry aloud, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and stand up from the dead, that Christ may give thee light," Ephesians 5:14 .
Turn you now from your evil ways, &c.] This was the constant cry of the prophets, as here, and apostles, as Acts 26:18, to open men's eyes (naturally closed up that they cannot see the evil of their ways, Jeremiah 2:35 Rev 3:15), to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.
And from your evil doings] Heb. Designs, gests, or exercises, enterprised advisedly, and prosecuted studiously, of natural disposition and inclination, as Proverbs 20:11 1 Samuel 25:3. This St John usually calleth committing of sin, 1 John 3:4; 1Jn 3:8-9 John 8:34; this is to add rebellion to sin, Job 34:37, impudence to impotence, brows of brass to iron sinews, Isaiah 48:4. This is wickedness with a witness, which if men could but see in its native colours and cursed consequents, they would soon be persuaded to turn from it. As the eye cannot but be offended with a loathsome object, so neither can the understanding. Take rat poison, it looketh not evil; but when a man feels it boil, burn, torture him, &c., he hates it extremely. So he should do sin; he will do else at length, when it is too late. For prevention: take the counsel of a martyr, get thee God's law, as a glass to look in. So shall you see your faces foul arrayed, and so shameful, mangy, pocky, and scabbed, that you cannot but be sorry at the contemplation thereof, and seek out for cure; especially if you look to the tag tied to God's law, the malediction; which is such, as cannot but make us to cast our currish tails between our legs, if we believe it. But O faithless hard hearts! O Jezebel's guests, rocked and laid asleep in her bed! O wicked wretches! &c.
But they did not hear] Though the prophets cried, and spake loud enough to be heard and heeded. A heavy ear is a singular judgment, Isaiah 6:10; a hearing ear, a precious mercy, Proverbs 20:12. God must be entreated to bore our ear, Psalms 40:6, and to make the bore so big that the word may enter; to say as Isaiah 42:18, Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind, that ye may see.