Ver. 1. Again the word of the Lord came unto me.] For the better setting on of what had been said in the foregoing chapter, for cutting the combs of the self-conceited Jews, and convincing them of their wickedness and wretchedness thereby. The chapter consisteth of law and gospel, (Ezekiel 16:60) and is a lively type, animae peccatricis et poenitentis, of an offending and repenting soul.
Ver. 2. Cause Jerusalem to know her abominations.] Which as yet she taketh no knowledge of. Rebuke her therefore sharply, that she may be sound in the faith, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
Ver. 3. Thy birth.] Heb., Thy cutting out. Compare Isaiah 51:1. And thy nativity.] Vide insignem genealogiam, vide γενεθλοιν pudendum. Mutato heroine de te fabula narratur. Cicero saith the old Britons were as barbarous as the Scythians. Thy father was an Amorite.] An Amorite thou mayest seem to be rather than an Abramite; for thou hast filled the land, as they did, (Ezra 9:11) from end to end with thine uncleanness. And thy mother an Hittite.] Those worst of women. (Genesis 27:46) De Nat. Deor. Duris genuit te cautibus horrens Caucasus. -Virg.
Ver. 4. Thy navel was not cut.] None was so courteous as to do any of these necessary good offices for thee, a poor, forlorn, helpless wretch. No creature is so shiftless as a newly born babe, which, cast out and left to the wide world, must needs perish. Plut., lib. De Amore Prolis.
Ver. 5. None eye pitied thee.] No, not thy mother, in whose heart God had planted natural affection for that purpose. Neither would thy Lucina become thy Levana (two heathen deities), to take thee up from the ground, where thou layest, alas! weltering in thy gore, and more like to a slain than a live child.
Ver. 6. And when I passed by thee.] Not by chance, [as Luke 10:31] but of free choice, and according to mine eternal purpose. And saw thee in thy blood.] In this deplorable condition. Blood is in this verse thrice mentioned, to set forth the greatness of man’s misery in his pure, or rather impure, natural state, and the freeness of God’s grace toward him all along. (Matthew 11:26) I said unto thee, Live,] God speaketh spiritual life to his poor people, (Isaiah 55:3) and often repeateth to them his precious promises, whereby they come to “partake of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (2 Peter 1:4)
Ver. 7. As the bud of the field.] He prosecuteth the allegory of a miserable maiden, with whom the matter beginneth to mend. Iam enim menses patiebatur, ubera creverant et pili circa pubem; so that now she was marriageable. And thou art come to excellent ornaments.] Heb., To ornaments of ornaments, such as virgo nobilis, cum iam est nubilis, habet, young ladies have, when grown up especially. Whereas thou wast naked and bare.] Heb., Nakedness and rejection. God looked upon us and loved us, whenas yet we had not a rag to our backs. Cum tu nuda esses, argue nudissima.
Ver. 8. Behold, thy time was the time of love.] When thou wast both fit for marriage, and desirous of it. For as the man misseth his rib, so the woman would be in her old place again, under the man’s arm or wing. See Ruth 3:1,9. And I spread my skirt over thee.] See Ruth 3:9. [See Trapp on “Ru 3:9”] I covered thy nakedness, and took thee into my care and company as a wife. A marriage rite is imported by this expression. Yea, I sware unto thee, &c.] So much ado God hath with us to make us believe. The apostle mentioneth “the work of faith.” She hath somewhat to do before she can fasten.
Ver. 9. Then washed I thee with water.] I cleansed thee from all thy pollutions by the merit and Spirit of my dear Son. See 1 Corinthians 6:11. And I anointed thee with oil.] Newly married wives were usually washed, anointed, and richly arrayed. The dead also were washed, as Dorcas; and embalmed, as Jacob; and Proverbs 31:8, they are called bene chaloph, which signifieth “change of raiment.” Death strips us all, but happy are they whom Christ hath spread his skirt over. See 2 Corinthians 5:2-4.
Ver. 10. I clothed thee also with broidered work.] Phrygionica veste variegata. With variety of precious graces, whereby thou didst outshine Solomon in all his bravery; for one grain of faith is of better worth than all the gold of Ophir, and one remnant of hope beyond all the gay clothing in the world. And girded thee about with fine linen.] The Church hath a rich wardrobe for woollens and linens; God’s plenty of both.
Ver. 11. I decked thee also with ornaments.] See Ezekiel 16:7; such as render thee amiable and admirable. Christ himself, who was not moved at all with the offer of all the world’s good, (Matthew 4:9,10) confesseth himself ravished with them. (Song of Solomon 4:9)
Ver. 12. And I put a jewel on thy forehead.] Heb., On thy nose. See on Genesis 24:47.
Ver. 13. Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver.] Yea, with far better habiliments; for what is gold and silver but the guts and garbage of the earth? It was observed of Queen Elizabeth (as of her father before her), that she loved to go very richly arrayed. Her sister Queen Mary had, at her coronation, her head so laden with jewels, that she could hardly hold it up. King Richard II had one coat of gold and jewels valued at 30,000 marks. This was much, but nothing to the Church’s beauty and bravery, which yet was all but borrowed, as is said in the next verse. Thou didst eat fine flour and honey,] i.e., The very best of the best. Thou didst eat of the fat, and drink of the sweet of my holy ordinances.
Ver. 14. And thy renown went forth.] Pliny saith of Jerusalem that it was the most famous of all the cities of the East; of the world he might have said, all things considered. Through the comeliness which I had put upon thee.] As Abraham’s servant put the jewels upon Rebekah. See on Ezekiel 16:13. That is a famous canon of the second Arausican council, Tales nos amat Deus, quales futuri sumus ipsius dono, non quales sumus nostro merito: God loveth us such as we shall be by his free gift, and not such as we are by our own merit. Canon 12.
Ver. 15. But thou didst trust in thine own beauty.] Thou grewest proud of it, and thoughtest there was none such; whenas thou mightest well have said of it, as he in the holy history did of his hatchet, “Alas, master, it was but borrowed.” And playedst the harlot.] Being fair and foolish. “ Lis est cum forma magna pudicitiae. ” Because of thy renown.] Being puffed up with the greatness of thy name and fame, which should have made thee more morigerous. (Proverbs 27:21) [See Trapp on “Pr 27:21”] And pouredst out thy fornications.] Indifferently and impudently, like a filthy strumpet. His it was.] Quicunque vult; come as come would: so detestably insatiated wast thou. The Papists boast of their Church that she is a pious mother, that shutteth her bosom to no man. Meretricis scilicet hoc est meretricissimae.
Ver. 16. And of thy garments thou didst take.] Thou sparedst for no cost to trick up thy mawmets and monuments of idolatry. No more do Papists: witness their churches, yea, their cloisters and churchyards (for want of room within), stuffed with their vowed presents and rich vestments. Besides that they do garnish and furnish out their heretical doctrines with testimonies of Holy Scripture, which they wrest, and with authority of ancient fathers, whom they wrong, Quaerit diabolus a te ornari, said Augustine to a scholar of his, who was learned and lewd; that is, The devil would fain be dressed up by thee. The like things shall not come.] Such a desperate idolomany as thine can hardly be matched or met with anywhere. So an Englishman Italienate ltalianised is even a devil incarnate. Julian the apostate was by some called Idolian.
Ver. 17. Images of men.] To be thy gallants, with whom thou mightest adulterise and idolise. Vah scelus! Surely he is a rare man that hath not some or other idol whereon he bestows pains and cost, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” (1 John 5:21)
Ver. 18. And tookest thy broidered, &c.] See Ezekiel 16:16.
Ver. 19. My meat also…thou hast even set it before them.] Either as consecrated to them, or otherwise to be consecrated by them, which made Daniel so scrupulous of meddling with the king’s meat. (Ezekiel 1:8) Thus it was.] Just so, and no otherwise, however thou would palliate the business, and art ready to put me to my proofs. [as Jeremiah 2:35]
Ver. 20. Whom thou hast born unto me.] Who at their birth were mine by virtue of my covenant, and who should therefore have been consecrated unto me. Polanus here giveth this good note: A Church, though it be idolatrous, may bring forth children to God, by bestowing upon them the sacrament of initiation or regeneration; and God will acknowledge them for his children, till such time as he hath given a bill of divorce to that Church. This is done whereas she openly betaketh herself to the bed of another husband, by disowning Christ for her God, Lord, Bridegroom, and Mediator; as the Asiatic Church hath done, by defecting first to Nestorianism, and now to Mohammedanism. Let this be well noted against the Anabaptists of these times. Diod. Pol. in loc.
Ver. 21. That thou hast slain my children.] Note that he yet calleth them his children, though so born, and so murdered. See on Ezekiel 16:20.
Ver. 22. Thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth.] Hence all thy haughtiness and hauntiness. We should often say, as that noble Iphicrates the Athenian once did, Εξ οιων εις ο ια, From how small to how great matters hath the Lord raised me!
Ver. 23. Woe, woe unto thee, saith the Lord God.] A double woe will fall very heavy here and hereafter; woe and alas for evermore.
Ver. 24. That thou hast also built unto thee.] How stintless is sin, and how like is this to Jeremiah’s preaching! (Jeremiah 2:3-8) An eminent place.] Or brothel house, that thy madness may appear to all men.
Ver. 25. And hast made thy beauty to be abhorred.] By being made so cheap and common. Sin is a reproach to any people, (Proverbs 14:34) idolatry especially. (1 Peter 4:3) And hast opened thy feet.] See on Ezekiel 16:15.
Ver. 26. Great of flesh.] Torosi, scil., propter potentiam et petulantiam. The prophet persisteth in the metaphor, from the manner of shamelessly lascivious women: such as was Messalina, the wife of Claudius the emperor; and she in Apuleius that entertained the ass. See Ezekiel 23:20. Flesh is here and elsewhere taken for the privities, quod est membrum prorsus carneum.
Ver. 27. I have stretched out my hand over thee.] To cut thee short. [as Hosea 2:9] And have diminished thine ordinary food.] Diminui demensum tuum. What should a father do but snatch away the meat from his child that marreth it? or a husband, but hold his wanton wife to straiter allowance? The daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way.] It must needs be most lewd that Philistines were ashamed of. Zimmah signifieth wickedness with a witness. Jerome interpreteth it an execrable and villanous filthiness. So is Popish idolatry in the eyes of modern Jews; and the hellish blasphemies darted out against God and Christ so ordinarily and openly by pseudo Christians, abominable to the Turks, who do punish them for it with great severity.
Ver. 28. Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians.] By making sinful leagues, and gadding so much about to change thy way. (Jeremiah 2:36) And yet couldest not be satisfied.] It is as easy to quench the fire of Etna as the thoughts set on fire by lust.
Ver. 29. In the land of Canaan.] Thou hast lived in my good land, but not by my good laws. And yet thou wast not satisfied.] See on Ezekiel 16:28.
Ver. 30. How weak is thine heart.] Weak as water, melted in spiritual lust, putrefying alive, and perishing daily, as Tiberius said he perceived himself to do at Capreae. This is here uttered by way of admiration; and the word rendered heart, being otherwhere of the masculine gender, is here made feminine, to show how idolaters are effeminated to a base and sensual esteem of God and his service. [Hebrew Text Note] The work of an imperious whorish woman.] Of a strong whore; weak to do good, but strong to do evil; so are all idolaters with their hippomanes et cacoethes. The word rendered imperious signifieth a sultaness or queen; who, if with a queen, what will she not dare to do? See it in that whore of Babylon, who sitteth as a queen, &c. The unbridled boisterousness of idolaters, see Jeremiah 44:16,17. Sueton. Pervicacissimae et procacissimae. Une paillarde robuste. -French.
Ver. 31. And hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornsst hire.] Whore should be written hore, as coming from the word hire; as the Latin meretrix a merendo. Harlot is said to come of Arlet, mother to our William the Conqueror; in spite to whom, and disgrace to his mother, the English called all whores harlots, adding an aspiration to her name, according to their manner of pronouncing.
Ver. 32. Which taketh strangers instead of her husband.] This is a foul mistake; wedlock should be chaste. The window of the ark shut, that the waters of the flood enter not into it.
Ver. 33. They give gifts to all whores.] See Ezekiel 16:31. Harlots are cruces and crumenimulgae, saith the comedian, crosses and suck purses. See Luke 15:14. “ Nuda Venus picta est, nndi pinguntur amores: Nam quos nuda capit, nudos dimittat oportet.”
Ver. 34. And the contrary is in thee, &c.] The Jews, before the Babylonish captivity, were madly and above measure set upon the sin of idolatry, say their own Rabbis; so that if one clothed never so richly had seen an idol on the further side of a broad pool, he would have gone through thick and thin, etiam in cloacalem foetulentam, end even in foul smelling sewers to have worshipped it. Oecolamp.
Ver. 35. Wherefore, O harlot.] A name good enough for such an odious housewife, the shame of her sex. He is not worthy of an honest name whose deeds are not honest. Hear the word of the Lord.] Hear thy doom, thy sentence: stoned thou shalt be as an adulteress, slain with the sword as a murderess, burned with fire as an incendiary, because thou hast burned thy children in honour of Moloch. απ εργων ου καλων ουκ εστιν επη καλα.
Ver. 36. Because thy filthiness.] Heb., Thy poison, aerugo tua. your ill will, Thy filthiness issuing from thee by reason of thine overly frequent and excessive adulteries. He meaneth the infamous fluxes of whores, saith Diodat. And by the blood.] Heb., Bloods, because scattered about in several drops.
Ver. 37. With whom thou hast taken pleasure.] Or, With whom thou hast been commingled. Iocundata es. And will discover thy nakedness unto them.] This is by modest women taken for a very great punishment. Polyxena, when she was sacrificed, took great care to fall handsomely. The Milesian maids would not be kept from killing themselves till there was a law made that such as so did should be drawn naked through the market. Till the days of Theodosius senior, if a woman were taken in adultery, they shut her up in a stews, and compelled her beastly, and without all shame, to play the harlot, ringing a bell while the deed was doing, that all the neighbours might be made privy to it. This evil custom that good emperor took away, making other laws for the punishment of adultery.
Ver. 38. And I will judge thee as women that break wedlock.] See Leviticus 20:10 De 22:22. The Egyptians cut off the harlot’s nose, and the adulterer’s privy members; the Romans beheaded them; the old Germans whipped them through the streets; Canutus, the Danish king in this land, banished them; Tenedius, a king in another land, did cut them in sunder with an axe; by our laws they are to be hanged, as by the Jews’ laws to be stoned. (Ezekiel 16:40) And shed blood.] See Ezekiel 16:35. I will give thee blood.] God loveth to retaliate.
Ver. 39. They shall throw down thine eminent place.] So did the Turks throw down many both images and churches in Christendom, when people would not be persuaded to cast images out of their churches. They shall strip thee also of thy clothes.] So the Spaniards did the Dutch, when once they grew fond of the Spanish fashions, as Lavater here notes.
Ver. 40. They shall also bring up a company against thee.] The Chaldeans, that “hasty and bitter nation.” (Habakkuk 1:6) And they shall stone thee.] See on Ezekiel 16:35.
Ver. 41. In the sight of many women.] Those matrons whom thou hast misused; and many others who may well be warned, by thy just punishment, to keep their faith to God and man.
Ver. 42. So I will make my fury toward thee to rest.] Sept., I will dismiss mine anger upon thee. Like as when Haman was hanged, Ahasuerus’s wrath was pacified; (Esther 7:10) and as when Jonah was cast overboard, the sea was calmed.
Ver. 43. Because thou hast not remembered, &c.] Thou hast not cared to converse with thyself, nor to recogitate my goodness, and thine own badness. But hast fretted me.] Or, Hast kept a stir with me; or rather, Stirred up thyself against me; and all through want of reflection and self-examination. See Jeremiah 8:6. I also will recompense thy way upon thy head.] As the arrows of those Thracians, thrown up against Jupiter, for raining upon them unseasonably, came down again upon their own heads, so here. Herodot.
Ver. 44. Behold, every one that useth proverbs.] Omnis paraemiator paraemiabit. That is skilful at, and exercised in gibing and jeering; as was Socrates—called therefore ο Σκωπτων, the Scoffer—Democritus, Lucian, Sir Thomas Moore, Erasmus, &c. Shall use this proverb.] This taunting proverb. As is the mother, so is her daughter.] The birth followeth the belly. Κακου κορακος κακον ωον. Ill birds lay ill eggs. Qualis hera, talis ancilla, &c.
Ver. 45. Thou art thy mother’s daughter.] As like her as if spat out of her mouth; so like her, that thou art the worse again. Your mother was an Hittite.] And doth therefore seek her daughter in the oven, because she had first been there herself. See Ezekiel 16:3.
Ver. 46. She and her daughters,] i.e., Her cities and villages. That dwell at thy left hand.] Thou art well set up therewhile, well neighboured. That dwelleth at thy right hand.] That did do so, but new dwelleth with devils; being “thrown out for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” (Jude 7)
Ver. 47. Yet hast thou not walked after their ways.] But hast out sinned them. Nolunt solita peccare, Do not make a habit of sinning, saith Seneca of some, They will not sin in an ordinary way. Et pudet non esse impudentes, saith Augustine of others; i.e., they are ashamed not to be past shame. But as if that were a very little thing.] Paululum pauxillumque; A peccadillo.
Ver. 48. As I live, saith the Lord God, Sodom thy sister hath not done.] Heb., If Sodom thy sister hath done, &c.; q.d., Then let me never be trusted more. Here, then, is a double oath taken by God, to assure this people that they had outsinned Sodom—a truth that they would not easily assent to. To this day we cannot get men to believe that their natures are so naught, their lives so lewd, their state so dangerous, as the preachers make them. Their hearts are good, their penny good silver, &c. The prophet Isaiah lost his life, say the Rabbis, for calling the rulers of Jerusalem rulers of Sodom, and the people of Judah people of Gomorrah. (Isaiah 1:10)
Ver. 49. Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride,] i.e., Haughty mindedness and high conceitedness of their own surpassing excellence and stable felicity. This was the first firebrand that set Sodom on fire. Fulness of bread.] Gourmandise and surquedry. This fulness bred forgetfulness, and this saturity security. “ Luxuriant animi rebus plerumque secundis: Nec facile est aequa commoda mente pati.” And abundance of idleness.] Tranquillitas tranquillitatis, rest of rest; and this abused to idleness, deep idleness, which is the devil’s pillow, and the mother of many mischiefs; for he shall not but do naughtily that does nothing. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor.] Inhospitable they were, and unmerciful. The two angels might have lain in the streets for them; neither would they let them rest when Lot had lodged them.
Ver. 50. And they were haughty.] This sin of theirs is once more instanced as the root of the rest, the hate of heaven, and gate to hell. And committed abomination before me.] That unnatural filthiness which taketh its name from them. This in the Levant is not held a vice, and in Mexico it is one of the Spanish virtues. Therefore I took them away as I saw good,] sc., By raining down hell from heaven upon them. Hereby also God gave men an example of that rule, that heinous sins bring hideous plagues, as Herodotus also saith of the fall of Troy.
Ver. 51. Neither hath Samaria committed half thy sins.] And yet thou lookest aloof upon her as a far greater sinner than thyself, because already carried captive, whenas thou hast done and spoken evil things as thou couldst, (Jeremiah 3:5) outdone her a fair deal. And hast justified thy sisters.] Who may well seem saints in comparison of thee, and yet are as naught as need to be.
Ver. 52. Thou also which hast judged thy sisters.] Passed many harsh and rash censures upon them, not looking at all to the hinder part of the wallet. Bear thine own shame.] Thou shalt do it sure enough; for where sin is in the saddle, there shame is on the crupper. Accept therefore the punishment of thine iniquity; (Leviticus 26:43) give glory to God, take shame to thyself.
Ver. 53. When I shall bring again.] Or, If I bring again, which I shall never do. The Jewish doctors indeed would from this verse gather that Sodom and all shall one day be restored again; but that is like to be a long day. The Jews, as they had taken up the opinion of Pythagoras about transanimation, so they had that other of Plato about the great revolution or restitution of all things after certain years. Then will I bring again the captivity.] The Jews were never perfectly restored, in respect to the glory of the temple, and the state of the kingdom, &c.
Ver. 54. In that thou art a comfort unto them.] Ezekiel 14:22. Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris; to have companions in misery is some kind of comfort.
Ver. 55. When thy sister Sodom and her daughters.] See on Ezekiel 16:53. The Jews still dream that all this shall be done at the coming of their long looked for Messiah, and in his reign on earth for a thousand years. That then also Jerusalem shall be rebuilt and made up of gold, silver, and precious stones, &c. So apt are they to work themselves into the fool’s paradise of a sublime dotage. Jerome in loc.
Ver. 56. For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned.] Thou thoughtest her not worthy to be named in the same day with thee, and little dreamedst that thou shouldst be matched with her in misery. Or thus, Thou wouldst neither hear nor speak of her, though I had thrown her forth for an example of divine vengeance. (Jude 7) In the day of thy pride.] Heb., Prides; for pride buddeth, (Ezekiel 7:10) and, like a great swelling in the body which breaks and runs with loathsome and foul matter, it breaks forth into odious practices.
Ver. 57. Before thy wickedness was discovered,] sc., By my punishments, by my sending the Syrians and Philistines upon thee, in the days of Ahaz, to despoil and despise thee. Compare Isaiah 9:12.
Ver. 58. Thou hast borne thy lewdness,] i.e., The punishment of it, and yet art little the better. See Isaiah 9:13.
Ver. 59. I will even deal with thee.] I will avenge upon thee the quarrel of my covenant. (Leviticus 26:25)
Ver. 60. Nevertheless I will remember my covenant.] Here beginneth the evangelical part of the chapter, which is for the comfort of the elect, who would be frightened to hear those direful threats; like as in a house we cannot beat the dogs but the children will fall to crying.
Ver. 61. And be ashamed.] With a saving and savoury shame, such as was that of Ezra and of the penitent publican, proceeding from true compunction, and producing repentance never to be repented of. When thou shalt receive thy sisters.] Not Sodom only and Samaria, but all the Gentiles whom thou hast imitated; but now shalt become a worthy example of better things. But not by thy covenant.] Made with thee in Mount Sinai, but by a covenant of grace made in Mount Zion.
Ver. 62. And I will establish my covenant.] My new spiritual and eternal covenant, grounded upon the Messias, and made with the whole Israel according to faith. (Jeremiah 31:31-34 2 Corinthians 3:3 Hebrews 8:8)
Ver. 63. That thou mayest remember.] Thy many strayings. And never open thy mouth.] To extenuate thy sins, or to murmur at thy sufferings; but be silent and submissive.