Ver. 1. Ask you of the Lord rain] Ask it and have it; open your mouths wide, and he will fill them. “Seek ye the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you,” Hosea 10:12. Surely as the sun draws up vapours from the earth and sea, not to retain them, but to return them; and as thin vapours come down again in thick showers of rain; so God calls for our prayers, for out profit; and does for us “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,” Ephesians 3:20. Ask we must, Ezekiel 36:37. Prayer is an indispensable duty. Our Saviour taught his disciples to pray. He himself was to ask of his Father, and then he should have the heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, Psalms 2:8. He could have had presently twelve legions of angels to rescue him; but then he was to send to heaven for them by prayer, Matthew 26:53 “I came for thy words,” that is, for thy prayers’ sake, saith the angel to Daniel. As well as God loved him, he looked to hear from him, Daniel 10:11,12 for he will grace his own ordinances, and make his people know both their distance and dependence. Rain in the time of the latter rain] Rain is the flux of a moist cloud; which, being dissolved by little and little by the heat of the sun, lets down rain by drops out of the middle region of the air. This, if it come right in due time and measure, it maketh much for the fattening of the earth, Psalms 65:11, allaying the heat, nourishing the herb and tree, Isaiah 44:14, refreshing all creatures, grass, fruits, Leviticus 26:4 Jas 5:18 Isa 30:23. So, if otherwise, it proves a great punishment, Joel 1:10,11,17,19. Great expectation there was in Judaea and those Eastern parts of the former and the latter rain. That fell in the seedtime about autumn; this in the spring time, causing the grain to ear, and kernel before harvest. Both were to be sought of God alone. For are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heaven give showers? No, no; these come by a devine decree, Job 28:26. God prepares rain, Psalms 147:8, he dispenseth it in number weight, and measure, Job 28:25, not a drop falls in vain, or in a wrong place: he also withholds it when and where he thinks good, Amos 4:7. The Egyptians used, in a profane mockery, to tell other nations that if God should forget to rain they might all chance to starve for it. The rain they thought was of God, but not their river; which therefore God threateneth to dry up, Ezekiel 29:3,9 Isa 19:5,6, as also he did, as both Seneca and Ovid testify, in the reign of Cleopatra. The creatures at best are but broken cisterns, Jeremiah 2:13. Not fountains, but cisterns only; and those broken too; there is no trusting to them; they were never true to those that trusted them. So the Lord shall make bright clouds] Nubes cursitantes, thin clouds, that fly swiftly in the air, most commonly before and after very rainy weather. R. Solomon interprets the word here used not lightnings, which yet are signs and forerunners of rain, Psalms 135:7 Jer 10:13, but clouds bringing rain. Clouds are nothing else but vapours thickened in the middle region of the air, by the cold environing and driving them together; that they may be as so many heavenly bottles holding water, to be seasonably distilled. How they are upheld, and why they fall here, and now, and by drops, not by spouts (since they are vessels as thin as the liquor contained in them) we know not, and wonder. And give them showers of rain] Heb. Rain, rain, that is, plentiful rain upon his inheritance: the clouds shall return after the rain, Ecclesiastes 12:2, and as one shower is unburdened another shall be brewed. God scorns to say to the seed of Jacob, “Seek ye me in vain,” Isaiah 45:19, or that any of his suitors should go sad away for want of an answer. David asked him for life; and God gave him more, even length of days for ever and ever, Psalms 21:4. Many came to Christ for cure of their bodies, he cured them on both sides; and was better to them than their prayers. Gehazi asked Naaman for a talent of silver. Nay, take two, said he; and he pressed it upon him. So saith God to his, Ask and spare not, that your joy may be full. Ye are not straitened in me, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. Ye have not because ye ask not; and he is worthy to want it that may have it for asking only. To every one grass] Grass for the cattle, and corn for the food of man, as the Chaldee expounds it.
Ver. 2. For the idols have spoken vanity] q.d. Therefore ask good things at God’s hands, as rain, food, and all necessary provision; because idols and soothsayers cannot help you to these things. If they promise you (as they will), believe them not; for they lie as fast as once Rabshakeh did for his master, when he promised the people a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, Isaiah 36:17. And they will finally serve you as Absalom’s mule served her master; whom she left at his greatest need, to hang between heaven and earth, as rejected of both. Lo such are all creaturecomforts, golden delusions, lying vanities, apples of Sodom, nec vera, nec vestra, neither true nor yours, the fashion of this world, saith Paul, 1 Corinthians 7:31; the fantasies of men’s brain, saith Luke, Acts 25:23, the semblances and empty shows of good, without any reality or solid consistency, saith Solomon often. They are, saith our prophet here, a wicked deceit and fraudulence. An arrant lie, a false dream, a vain or empty comfort, that utterly deceiveth a man’s confidence, and maketh him, in the fulness of his conceited sufficience, to be in straits. These here for instance; viz. the Jews that had been carried captives as a flock without a guide, sheep without a shepherd, and yet had not (till after some while at least) renounced their idols, Jeremiah 44:22 Eze 8:10 Therefore they went their way as a flock] Driven by the butcher to the slaughter house. Idolatry is a land desolating sin; as besides these Jews (the more ingenuous of them at this day confess that in all their punishments there is still an ounce of the golden calf made by them in the wilderness) the Greek Church was undone by it. The worshipping of images they defended with tooth and nail (as they say), and established it in the second Council of Nice; not long before the Turk took Nice, and made it the seat of his empire, in opposition to Constantinople, which at length he took also; and bro ught in Mahometanism, that foul impiety, which quickly overspread the whole East and South, like as Popish idolatry did the West and North. But this iniquity will be their ruin. Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen (επεσεν, επεσεν). She hath fallen culpably, she shall therefore fall penally. And why? She is become the habitation of devils, that is, of idols. See Revelation 9:20 1Co 10:20.