And I will feed the flock of slaughter, [even] you, O poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock.
Ver. 7. And will I feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock] Or, as Montanus readeth it, for you, for your sakes, O poor of the flock, i.e. O ye that are poor in spirit, pure in heart, my little flock, as our Saviour's expression is in Luke. Even for your sakes will I yet for a time spare the reprobate goats, feeding them by my prophets, and provoking them to repentance. The word and sacraments, and all God's common temporal favours, are, in respect of external participation, communicated to reprobates by way of concomitancy only; because they are intermixed with the elect. Thus tares, mingled among wheat, partake of the fat of the land and moisture of the manure, which was not intended for them.
And I took unto me two staves] viz. That I might therewith do the office of a shepherd; and yet in more than an ordinary manner. For shepherds commonly carry but one staff or crook; or, at most, but a staff on their shoulders and a rod in their hands, as David shows in his pastoral, Psalms 23:3. But here are two staves taken; to show, saith Calvin, that God would surpass all the care and pains of men in governing that people.
The one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands] What these two should mean much ado is made among intrepreters. Some are for the two Covenants; others for the two Testaments; others for the order of Christ's preaching, sweet and mild at first, terrible and full of threatenings at last, as appeareth in Matthew 24:24,25. But what a wild conceit was that of Anthony, Archbishop of Florence, who understood the word of Dominic and his order; construing them thus: I, that is, God, took unto me two staves, viz. Beauty, that is, the order of Preachers, and Bands, that is, the order of Minorites, who are girt with a cord? The sounder sort of expositors make it to be a figure of the two ways which Christ useth at all times in the feeding of his Church; the one by love, guiding them by his word and Spirit; the other by severity, punishing them by the cruel hand of their enemies. See Isaiah 10:5. Thus Vatablus, Diodati, &c. And that this is the true sense, saith a Lapide, it appeareth: First, because this oracle of the prophet is of the time to come, and not of the time past. Secondly, the event (that best interpreter of prophecies) maketh for it. For first God's government of the commonwealth of Israel was beautiful and gentle, in the time of the Maccabees and of Christ; and then terrible and destructory, in the time of the Romans, of Nero, Vespasian, Adrian, &c. Thirdly, because a little after the prophet saith that he brake both the staves, that is, he utterly rejected the Jews, and brought his wrath upon them to the utmost, which cannot be meant by any other time than that of Christ, and of Titus. Especially since (in the fourth place) the prophet declareth, Zechariah 11:13, that the staff of Beauty was broken at the death of Christ, for their unworthy selling and slaughtering of him, as if he had been some slave or base person.
And I fed the flock] q.d. I did my part by them. Thy destruction, therefore, is of thyself, O Israel. England is a mighty animal, saith a politician, which can never die except it kill itself. The same might be much more said of the Jewish commonwealth, which Josephus truly and trimly calleth a Theocratia, or a God government, for the form and first constitution of it; and Moses, in this respect, magnifieth that nation above all other, Deuteronomy 4:6,7 .