25. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub This is equivalent to calling himself Lord of the Church, as the apostle, when comparing him to Moses and the prophets, (Hebrews 3:1,) says, that they were servants, but that he is the Son and heir. Though he bestows on them the honor of calling them brethren, (Hebrews 2:11,) yet he is the first-born (Romans 8:29) and head of the whole church; and, in short, he possesses supreme government and power. Nothing, therefore, can be more unreasonable than to wish to be accounted believers, and yet to murmur against God when he conforms us to the image of his Son, whom he has placed over all his family. To what sort of delicacy do we pretend, if we wish to hold a place in his house, and to be above the Lord himself? The general meaning is, that we carry our delicacy and tenderness to excess, if we account it a hardship to endure reproaches to which our Prince willingly submitted.
Beelzebub is a corrupted term, and would have been more correctly written Baalzebub. This was the name given to the chief of the false gods of the Philistines, who was worshipped by the inhabitants of Ekron, (Genesis 1:2.) Baalim was the name of the inferior deities, whom the Papists of our day call patrons. Now, as Baalzebub means the patron of the fly, or of the flies, some have thought that he was so called on account of the great multitude of flies in the temple, occasioned by the number of sacrifices; but I rather conjecture that the assistance of the idol was implored against the flies which infested that place. When Ahazlah, under the influence of superstition, applied to him to be informed about his recovery, he gave him this name, which would appear from that circumstance not to be a term of reproach. But as the name gehenna was applied by holy men to hell, in order to stamp that place with infamy, so, in order to express their hatred and detestation of the idol, they gave the name Beelzebub to the devil. Hence we infer that wicked men, for the purpose of rendering Christ detestable to the multitude, employed the most reproachful term which they could invent, by calling him the devil, or, in other words, the greatest enemy of religion. If we happen to be assailed by the same kind of reproach, we ought not to think it strange, that what began in the head should be completed in the members.