Ver. 9. But I wrought for my name’s sake.] Lest the heathens should say to my dishonour, Me non voluisse aut valuisse eos educere, that I either would not, or could not, bring them out of the house of bondage. Ergo quod nomen suum in nobis servandis asserat, sperandum est. It is also well to be hoped that God will deal favourably with the reformed churches, though ill deserving, for the dishonour that else would redound to himself. Fiat, fiat.

Ver. 10. Wherefore I caused them.] With a strong hand and an outstretched arm I caused it, against all the force of Egypt. (Exodus 13:18) God hath also mightily brought England out of Egypt spiritually, and dealt with it, not according to his ordinary rule, but according to his prerogative. And brought them into the wilderneas.] Where I was not any “wilderness unto them, or land of darkness,” (Jeremiah 2:31) but a God all-sufficient, raining bread from heaven upon them, and setting the flint abroach, rather than they should pine and perish.

Ver. 11. And I gave them my statutes.] Which were far beyond the laws of the twelve tables in Rome, whereof yet Cicero affirmeth that they were far beyond all the libraries of philosophers. And shewed them my judgments.] Statutes and judgments are usually put in Scripture for one and the same, though the lawyers make a difference of them. Prosper’s conceit was, that this people were called Judaei. because they received ius Dei the law of God. Which if a man do.] But that he can never do exactly; evangelically he may, and that sufficeth to life eternal.

Ver. 12. Moreover also, I gave them my Sabbaths.] A sweet mercy, without which the best would even grow wild. What a wretch then was that Egyptian in Phagius, who said that those Jews, and after them the Christians, had a loathsome disease upon them, and were therefore fain to rest the seventh day! To be a sign between me and them.] A distinctive sign of my distinguishing grace to Israel above others, who jeered them for sabbatising, as those that lost a seventh part of their precious time. To be also both a sign of a godly person—anciently, when the question was propounded, Servasti Dominicum? Hast thou kept the Lord’s-day? the answer was returned, I am a Christian, and can do no less—and a means of conveying more holiness into his heart.

Ver. 13. But the house of Israel rebelled.] They did little else; they made it their trade for forty years long. (Psalms 95:8-11) And my Sabbaths they greatly polluted.] They vehemently violated; either they rested only thereon, or else they shamelessly troubled and disquieted that sanctified day of God’s rest. The world, saith one, is now grown perfectly profane, and can play on the Lord’s-day without book. Then I said, I would pour out my fury.] God’s sayings are of two sorts; some are the sayings of his eternal counsel, and these are immutable; others of his threatening only, and these oft are conditional. God therefore threateneth that he may not punish, saith an ancient. Bishop King on Jonah.

Ver. 14. But I wrought for my name’s sake.] Oh how oft are we beholden to this motive, and do escape fair by this means! See on Ezekiel 20:9.

Ver. 15. Yet also I lifted up mine hand.] Here we have an epitome of Exodus and Numbers. Flowing with milk and honey.] See on Ezekiel 20:6. If it be not so fertile and desirable now, it is for the Jews’ inexpiable guilt in crucifying the Lord of glory. The like befell Sodom—once as the garden of God, now a dead sea, where nothing can live.

Ver. 16. For their heart went after their idols.] Heb., Their dungy deities; those dirty delights carried them sheer away from God and goodness. Any beloved sin will do so.

Ver. 17. Nevertheless mine eye spared them.] It was by a non obstante of God’s mercy, and by a prop of his extraordinary patience, that they subsisted.

Ver. 18. Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers.] With this text Frederick IV, prince palatine, answered another prince, who pressed him to be of his late noble father’s religion. Laban swore by the god of Nahor, or Abram, and of their idolatrous fathers; but Jacob sware by the “fear of his father Isaac,” his immediate father more right in religion. (Genesis 31:53) Joshua would not follow the footsteps of his forefathers, (Joshua 24:15) but a better precedent. Christ saith, Ego sum veritas, non vetustas; I am the truth not antiquity, and contradicteth that which was said of old by those Kadmonim, who had corrupted the letter of the law by their false glosses. (Matthew 5:21) Antiquity must have no more authority than it can maintain.

Ver. 19. Walk in my statutes.] This is a surer and safer way. Lex, lux: “The commandment is a lamp, and the law is light.” (Proverbs 6:23) Come, therefore, to this light, that your deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. (John 3:21)

Ver. 20. And hallow my Sabbaths.] By abandoning as well spiritual idleness as corporal labour. And they shall be a sign.] See on Ezekiel 20:11.

Ver. 21. See on Ezekiel 20:13.

Ver. 22. See on Ezekiel 20:14.

Ver. 23. See on Ezekiel 20:15.

Ver. 24. See on Ezekiel 20:16.

Ver. 25. Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good.] i.e., I gave them up to their own inventions and hearts’ lusts (which was worse than to be delivered up to Satan), because they were ingrati gratiae Dei, as Ambrose hath it; they received the grace of God in vain. By “statutes not good,” some understand the ceremonial laws, which commanded neither virtue nor vice in themselves. Others, such decrees and ordinances of God in the wilderness as were not good for them, but hurtful; as that for the execution of the calf worshippers, of the Baalpeorites, of Korah and his company, of the murmurers at Kibrothhattaavah, &c. Solon being asked whether he had given the best laws to the Athenians? answered, The best that they could bear.

Ver. 26. And I polluted them in their own gifts,] i.e., I rejected both their persons and presents as unclean. So God would do our best performances (wherein there would not else be so much as truth and sincerity found), were they not wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, and perfumed with Christ’s sweet odours poured into them.

Ver. 27. Your fathers have blasphemed me.] Because they trembled not at my judgments while they hung in the threatenings, but went on wilfully in their wickedness, putting it to the venture. This is a kind of blasphemy. Compare Numbers 15:30,31. This is a sin scarce to be expiated with any sacrifice: such a sinner must be cut off.

Ver. 28. For when I had brought them into the land.] It hath been already observed that good turns aggravate unkindnesses, and men’s sins are much increased by their obligations.

Ver. 29. And the name thereof is called Bamah,] i.e., A high place; a name good enough in itself, but, as used by them, as odious to all good hearts as a brothel house is to a chaste matron. She is the worse to pass by it, and spitteth at it. So should we in like case. (Exodus 23:13 Psalms 16:4 Hosea 2:16,17 Zechariah 13:2 Deuteronomy 12:2)

Ver. 30. Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers?] q.d., Are you good at that indeed? and have you yet a face to threadbare that paltry proverb of yours, The fathers have eaten sour grapes? &c. Give over, for shame.

Ver. 31. And shall I be inquired of by you?] Is it ever likely to do well, think you? Of witches’ good prayers, as some call them, one saith well: Si magicae, Deus non vult tales: si piae, non per tales. See Jeremiah 7:9,10. [See Trapp on “Jer 7:9”] [See Trapp on “Jer 7:10”]

Ver. 32. And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all.] You are laying a plot for an accommodation with the Babylonish idolaters, a compliance with them, and thereby you think to ingratiate, to get their favour and friendship. But please not yourselves in such a project; it will never be. So, no peace with Rome. The Moderater, Sancta Clara, and other such as sought to bring us together, made a pretty show, saith one, if there had been no Bible. Such carnal professors are not unlike these in the text, as seeing the wicked’s full cups, and their own harder condition, are ready to revolt, that “waters of a full cup may be wrung out to them” also. (Psalms 73:10) We will be as the heathen.] And so help ourselves as we can, since God will not help us.

Ver. 33. Surely with a mighty hand.] You are ready to say, as in Jeremiah 2:31, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee; but I shall sure subdue you as so many perverse slaves or sturdy rebels. So unhappy is apostasy; so little is got by struggling, or by starting aside like a deceitful bow. God will rule over such with rigour; he will have the better of them to their small comfort.

Ver. 34. And I will bring you out from the people.] The heathens with whom you have incorporated, hoping so to shun me, and to be out of the reach of my rod; but I shall sure find and ferret you out of all your starting holes; I shall be meet with you. So God was here with the English by the sweating sickness, which hunted and haunted also our countrymen in foreign parts, singling them out from others. It reigned, or rather God reigned by it, some forty years together. Sennert. De Febrib., lib. iv. cap. 15.

Ver. 35. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people.] Into the most solitary and savage places of the world, for a fulness of misery without the benefit of any good society. And there will I plead with you face to face,] i.e., Solus cum solis et sine arbitris, Having you there alone, I will punish you to some purpose.

Ver. 36. Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness.] Where their carcases fell thick and threefold, till they were all consumed. “Behold we die, we perish, we all perish,” said they once to Moses in a pet; “shall we be consumed with dying?” (Numbers 17:12,13)

Ver. 37. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant.] Why, then, Feri, Domine, feri, Smite, Lord, smite, so my sins may be pardoned, and my soul saved. Hic seca, hic ure, ut in aeternum serves, Here suffer, here burn that you may protect us in eternity, said an ancient: Do even whatsoever thou wilt with me, so I may come to heaven, though I come to it by weeping cross.

Ver. 38. And I will purge out from among you the rebels.] Making first a difference, and then a riddance of them from among my covenanters. And they shall not enter into the land of Israel.] But either die by the way, or, if they live to enter, they shall find it a strange land to what they or their fathers left it. See Jeremiah 44:14. Lavater maketh the sense to be, They shall not enter into the heavenly Canaan. See the like, Psalms 95:11. Non eos perducam ad promissiones aeternas. -Oecol.

Ver. 39. Go ye, serve ye everyone his idols,] q.d., You may for me; and I had rather you would, than dissemble, as you do, and play on both hands, to the scandal of the weak, and scorn of the wicked. For my part, I have done with you for ever; take your own course. And with your idols.] Away with these abominable mixtures. I will be served truly and totally, or not at all.

Ver. 40. For in mine holy mountain.] In my Church, and among my faithful people, for to these he now speaketh comfort. There will I accept them.] Ibi occurram eis, scil., quasi in amplexum sponsoe; so some render and sense the text; i.e., there I will meet them, and accept them with much sweetness. And there will require your offerings.] Not forbid and refuse them, as I did theirs. (Ezekiel 20:39)

Ver. 41. And I will be sanctified in you.] I will get me great glory by you among the heathen, while you are non aliunde noscibiles quam de emendatione vitiorum pristinorum, as Tertullian saith of the primitive Christians, no otherwise to be known better from others than by an alteration in you for the better.

Ver. 42. Into the land of Israel.] A pledge of a better place.

Ver. 43. Ye shall remember your ways.] Recognition is the first thing in reformation. See Ezekiel 16:61. And ye shall loathe yourselves.] Dissecabimini in faciebus vestris. Ye shall be, as it were, slashed with a sword over your faces, like as those (Acts 2:37) were pricked at heart: they felt their sins as so many daggers at their hearts. Percutietis facies vestras. -Sept.

Ver. 44. And ye shall know that I am the Lord.] A sin pardoning and heart sanctifying God; a rich rewarder of all that diligently seek me. (Hebrews 11:6)

Ver. 45. Moreover, &c.] See on Ezekiel 18:1.

Ver. 46. Set thy face.] Prophesy freely and boldly against Jerusalem, which is south from Chaldea. Against the forest.] Against Judea, which is mountainous and woody, having good and bad trees in it.

Ver. 47. Every green tree.] Good and bad shall to the fire together. (Ezekiel 21:3 Luke 23:31) Shall be burnt therein] Or scorched, if they may escape so.

Ver. 48. That I the Lord.] Who myself am a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:29)

Ver. 49. Doth he not speak parables?] Nonne artifex est parabolarum iste? Qui erga non vult intelligi, vult negligi. He is so high that we cannot take him, and shall therefore slight him as a madman, or not much better. A preacher shall have much ado to please a profane people. Neither maketh it much to the matter; but it is grievous, ah, Lord. Davus sum non Oedipus.

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