Ver. 1. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion] Idem aliis verbis repetit, saith Mercer here. The prophet repeats the same as in the former chapter, only in other words, more at large, and after another manner; pressing the people further to the practice of repentance by many sweet promises of the blessings of this and a better life. Our prophet may seem to be of the same mind with Tertullian, who said that he was nulli rei natus nisi poenitentiae, born for no other end but to repent, and to call upon others so to do. Tot autem verbis et figuris utitur, saith Luther, he useth so many words and figures, because he had to do with a people that were harder than rocks, Jeremiah 5:8; as also, because there is an absolute necessity of repentance. Aut poenitendum, aut pereundum, as our Saviour tells his disciples twice in a breath, Luke 13:2,5. The prophet had urged them hereunto from the evils they felt or feared, Joel 1. Pain and penitence are words of one derivation. God plagueth men that he may make them cry peccavi; I have sinned, not peril only, I am undone, as Cain; but peccavi, I have done very foolishly, as David. The first seventeen verses of this chapter are hortatory, the rest consolatory. The day of the Lord cometh, therefore repent. This is the sum of the exhortation. It cometh, and that instantly: give warning therefore. Go d loveth to foresignify, saith the heathen historian, and to admonish before he punish, Φιλει ο Θεος προσημαινειν (Herod.). He dealt so with Cain, to whom he read the first lecture of repentance, Genesis 4:9-15, as he had done of faith to his father Adam, in the chapter before. He dealt so with the old world, with the Sodomites, Ninevites. Sound an alarm in my holy mountain] Ring the bells backwards (as among us they do), the house is on fire, the enemy is at hand. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble] And take course to prevent or mitigate the ensuing mischief, to cut the cart ropes of sin that pull down wrath upon the land. For the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand] “An end is come, is come, is come,” as Ezekiel hath it, Ezekiel 7:6,7 “I will overturn, overturn, overturn,” as the same prophet hath it elsewhere, Ezekiel 21:27, “Should we then make mirth?” as it is in the same chapter, Ezekiel 21:10; should we sleep upon a mast pole, dance upon a weather cock, go hallooing and whooping to the place of execution?
Ver. 2. A day of darkness and of gloominess] Lest they should imagine it to be some light matter that hath been, and is still threatened, he sets forth to the life, the bitterness of that day, so lowering and lightless, that it can hardly be called a day; a dark and doleful doomsday it will be to the impenitent, infaustus et infelix, dismal and dreadful. What better can be expected by those Tenebriones, that delight in the deeds of darkness, and are acted by those rulers of the darkness of this world, Ephesians 6:12, the devils, whom they follow as they are led, 1 Corinthians 12:2, till they fall into outer darkness, σκοτος εξωτερον, even that darkness beyond a darkness (as the dungeon is beyond or below the prison), where they shall never see the light again till they see all the world on a light fire. Let those Lucifugae look to it, that love darkness better than light; for, besides what they meet with here, they shall one day have their bellies full of it in that dungeon of darkness. A day of clouds and of thick darkness]. Caused by that huge army of locusts, coming in great swarms and darkening the air. As the morning spread upon the mountains] i.e. longe, lateque, far and near, all the country over, and that in an instant; even as the morning spreadeth abroad suddenly over the tops of hills, though they be a great way off. Postera vix summos spargebat lumine montes Orta dies (Virg.) Lux subit, et primo feriente cacumina sole. (Ovid.) Hereby is imported that the calamity here threatened is such as they can neither avert nor avoid. Irretensibilis est, saith Luther. A great people and a strong] So the locusts are called, see Joel 1:4-6, not without some respect to the Chaldeans, that should afterwards carry them captive, as Jerome here glosseth. There hath not been ever the like] sc. in the land of Judea, nor of the like continuance. See Joel 1:2,3. Even to the years of many generations] Heb. Of an age and an age, so Deuteronomy 32:7 Joe 3:20. This assureth us of the greatness of this people’s sin, since they were so signally punished, for God doth not use to kill flies with beetles, as they say.
Ver. 3. A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth] Such waste these vermin shall make, like as it is said of the Great Turk, that wherever he sets his foot there never grows grass again; he doth so eat up the countries where he comes with his huge armies. And the late Lord Brook, in his discourse of episcopacy, notes, that that unhappy proverb among us was not for nought, The bishop’s foot hath trodden here. In Biscay, a province of Spain, they admit no bishops to come among them; and when Ferdinand, the Catholic king, came in progress hither, accompanied among others by the Bishop of Pampelune, the people arose in arms, drove back the bishop, and gathering all the dust on the which they thought he had trodden, flung it into the sea. What fires they kindled here in Queen Mary’s days, devouring six or seven hundred, at least, of God’s faithful witnesses in five years’ time; and what work they made in our remembrance throughout the three kingdoms, to the embroiling of all and their own utter ruin, I need not relate. That renowned author cited before had told them time enough, but that they were destined to destruction, that if they forbear to touch the supreme authority of the land, which they affected, it was but as once Mercury spared Jupiter’s thunderbolts, which he dared not steal, lest they should roar too loud, or, at least, burn his fingers. The land is as the garden of Eden] i.e. of all kind of pleasures and delights. See Genesis 2:8 13:10. Eden inde ηδονη. Strabo speaks spitefully of the land of Canaan, as if it were a dry, stony, and barren country, not worth the seeking after, Rabshakeh shows more ingenuity than this, Strabus et pravus Strabo (as one therefore calleth him), 2 Kings 18:32. Tacitus commends it for a fertile soil, so doth Pliny; but above all, the holy Scripture setteth it forth to be Sumen totius orbis, the bread basket of the whole world, a land flowing with milk and honey, &c., Exodus 3:17 De 32:13. And behind them a desolate wilderness] Not such a wilderness as yielded pastures, and habitations for shepherds, Joel 1:19,20, but utterly desolate, and therefore unhabitable, as under the torrid zone. No place can be so pleasant but sin can lay it waste. “A fruitful land turneth the Lord into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein,” Psalms 107:34. There is no footstep left to this day of that gallant garden, planted by God himself; or if any, cecidit rosa, est spina; the place remains in the upper part of Chaldea, but not the pleasantness of the place. The like we may say of Sodom, of Jerusalem, of Greece, of Asia the less, of Germany, Ireland, &c. England hath hitherto subsisted merely by a miracle of God’s mercy, and by a prop of his extraordinary patience. The Lord continue it to the glory of his name and the good of his poor people. Fiat, fiat.