Resultados para: "ROBBERS"

<p>We have here a further account of the first day&#039;s work, in which observe, 1. That the first of all visible beings which God created was light; not that by it he himself might see to work (for the darkness and light are both alike to him), but that by it we might see his works and his glory in them, and might work our works while it is day. The works of Satan and his servants are works of darkness; but he that doeth truth, and doeth good, cometh to the light, and coveteth it, that his deeds may be made manifest, Joh 3:21. Light is the great beauty and blessing of the universe. Like the first-born, it does, of all visible beings, most resemble its great Parent in purity and power, brightness and beneficence; it is of great affinity with a spirit, and is next to it; though by it we see other things, and are sure that it is, yet we know not its nature, nor can describe what it is, or by what way the light is parted, Job 38:19, Job 38:24. By the sight of it let us be led to, and assisted in, the believing contemplation of him who is light, infinite and eternal light (Jo1 1:5), and the Father of lights (Jam 1:17), and who dwells in inaccessible light, Ti1 6:16. In the new creation, the first thing wrought in the soul is light: the blessed Spirit captives the will and affections by enlightening the understanding, so coming into the heart by the door, like the good shepherd whose own the sheep are, while sin and Satan, like thieves and robbers, climb up some other way. Those that by sin were darkness by grace become light in the world. 2. That the light was made by the word of God&#039;s power. He said, Let there be light; he willed and appointed it, and it was done immediately: there was light, such a copy as exactly answered the original idea in the Eternal Mind. O the power of the word of God! He spoke, and it was done, done really, effectually, and for perpetuity, not in show only, and to serve a present turn, for he commanded, and it stood fast: with him it was dictum, factum - a word, and a world. The world of God (that is, his will and the good pleasure of it) is quick and powerful. Christ is the Word, the essential eternal Word, and by him the light was produced, for in him was light, and he is the true light, the light of the world, Joh 1:9; Joh 9:5. The divine light which shines in sanctified souls is wrought by the power of God, the power of his word and of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, opening the understanding, scattering the mists of ignorance and mistake, and giving the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, as at first, God commanded the light to shine out of darkness, Co2 4:6. Darkness would have been perpetually upon the face of fallen man if the Son of God had not come, and given us an understanding, Jo1 5:20. 3. That the light which God willed, when it was produced, he approved of: God saw the light that it was good. It was exactly as he designed it, and it was fit to answer the end for which he designed it. It was useful and profitable; the world, which now is a palace, would have been a dungeon without it. It was amiable and pleasant. Truly the light is sweet (Ecc 11:7); it rejoiceth the heart, Pro 15:30. What God commands he will approve and graciously accept; he will be well pleased with the work of his own hands. That is good indeed which is so in the sight of God, for he sees not as man sees. If the light is good, how good is he that is the fountain of light, from whom we receive it, and to whom we owe all praise for it and all the services we do by it! 4. That God divided the light from the darkness, so put them asunder as that they could never be joined together, or reconciled; for what fellowship has light with darkness? Co2 6:14. And yet he divided time between them, the day for light and the night for darkness, in a constant and regular succession to each other. Though the darkness was now scattered by the light, yet it was not condemned to a perpetual banishment, but takes its turn with the light, and has its place, because it has its use; for, as the light of the morning befriends the business of the day, so the shadows of the evening befriend the repose of the night, and draw the curtains about us, that we may sleep the better. See Job 7:2. God has thus divided time between light and darkness, because he would daily remind us that this is a world of mixtures and changes. In heaven there is perfect and perpetual light, and no darkness at all; in hell, utter darkness, and no gleam of light. In that world between these two there is a great gulf fixed; but, in this world, they are counterchanged, and we pass daily from one to another, that we may learn to expect the like vicissitudes in the providence of God, peace and trouble, joy and sorrow, and may set the one over-against the other, accommodating ourselves to both as we do to the light and darkness, bidding both welcome, and making the best of both. 5. That God divided them from each other by distinguishing names: He called the light day, and the darkness he called night. He gave them names, as the Lord of both; for the day is his, the night also is his, Psa 74:16. He is the Lord of time, and will be so, till day and night shall come to an end, and the stream of time be swallowed up in the ocean of eternity. Let us acknowledge God in the constant succession of day and night, and consecrate both to his honour, by working for him every day and resting in him every night, and meditating in his law day and night. 6. That this was the first day&#039;s work, and a good day&#039;s work it was. The evening and the morning were the first day. The darkness of the evening was before the light of the morning, that it might serve for a foil to it, to set it off, and make it shine the brighter. This was not only the first day of the world, but the first day of the week. I observe it to the honour of that day, because the new world began on the first day of the week likewise, in the resurrection of Christ, as the light of the world, early in the morning. In him the day-spring from on high has visited the world; and happy are we, for ever happy, if that day-star arise in our hearts.</p>

<p>We have here Jacob upon his journey towards Syria, in a very desolate condition, like one that was sent to seek his fortune; but we find that, though he was alone, yet he was not alone, for the Father was with him, Joh 16:32. If what is here recorded happened (as it should seem it did) the first night, he had made a long day&#039;s journey from Beersheba to Bethel, above forty miles. Providence brought him to a convenient place, probably shaded with trees, to rest himself in that night; and there he had,
I. A hard lodging (Gen 28:11), the stones for his pillows, and the heavens for his canopy and curtains. As the usage then was, perhaps this was not so bad as it seems how to us; but we should think, 1. He lay very cold, the cold ground for his bed, and, which one would suppose made the matter worse, a cold stone for his pillow, and in the cold air. 2. Very uneasy. If his bones were sore with his day&#039;s journey, his night&#039;s rest would but make them sorer. 3. Very much exposed. He forgot that he was fleeing for his life; or had his brother, in his rage, pursued, or sent a murderer after him, here he lay ready to be sacrificed, and destitute of shelter and defence. We cannot think it was by reason of his poverty that he was so ill accommodated, but, (1.) It was owing to the plainness and simplicity of those times, when men did not take so much state, and consult their ease so much, as in these later times of softness and effeminacy. (2.) Jacob had been particularly used to hardships, as a plain man dwelling in tents; and, designing now to go to service, he was the more willing to inure himself to them; and, as it proved, it was well, Gen 31:40. (3.) His comfort in the divine blessing, and his confidence in the divine protection, made him easy, even when he lay thus exposed; being sure that his God made him to dwell in safety, he could lie down and sleep upon a stone.
II. In his hard lodging he had a pleasant dream. Any Israelite indeed would be willing to take up with Jacob&#039;s pillow, provided he might but have Jacob&#039;s dream. Then, and there, he heard the words of God, and saw the visions of the Almighty. It was the best night&#039;s sleep he ever had in his life. Note, God&#039;s time to visit his people with his comforts is when they are most destitute of other comforts, and other comforters; when afflictions in the way of duty (as these were) do abound, then shall consolations so much the more abound. Now observe here,
1. The encouraging vision Jacob saw, Gen 28:12. He saw a ladder which reached from earth to heaven, the angels ascending and descending upon it, and God himself at the head of it. Now this represents the two things that are very comfortable to good people at all times, and in all conditions: - (1.) The providence of God, by which there is a constant correspondence kept up between heaven and earth. The counsels of heaven are executed on earth, and the actions and affairs of this earth are all known in heaven are executed on earth, and the actions and affairs of this earth are all known in heaven and judged there. Providence does its work gradually, and by steps. Angels are employed as ministering spirits, to serve all the purposes and designs of Providence, and the wisdom of God is at the upper end of the ladder, directing all the motions of second causes to the glory of the first Cause. The angels are active spirits, continually ascending and descending; they rest not, day nor night, from service, according to the posts assigned them. They ascend, to give account of what they have done, and to receive orders; and then descend, to execute the orders they have received. Thus we should always abound in the work of the Lord, that we may do it as the angels do it, Psa 103:20, Psa 103:21. This vision gave very seasonable comfort to Jacob, letting him know that he had both a good guide and a good guard, in his going out and coming in, - that, though he was made to wander from his father&#039;s house, yet still he was the care of a kind Providence, and the charge of the holy angels. This is comfort enough, though we should not admit the notion which some have, that the tutelar angels of Canaan were ascending, having guarded Jacob out of their land, and the angels of Syria descending to take him into their custody. Jacob was now the type and representative of the whole church, with the guardianship of which the angels are entrusted. (2.) The mediation of Christ. He is this ladder, the foot on earth in his human nature, the top in heaven in his divine nature: or the former in his humiliation, the latter in his exaltation. All the intercourse between heaven and earth, since the fall, is by this ladder. Christ is the way; all God&#039;s favours come to us, and all our services go to him, by Christ. If God dwell with us, and we with him, it is by Christ. We have no way of getting to heaven, but by this ladder; if we climb up any other way we are thieves and robbers. To this vision our Saviour alludes when he speaks of the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man (Joh 1:51); for the kind offices the angels do us, and the benefits we receive by their ministration, are all owing to Christ, who has reconciled things on earth and things in heaven (Col 1:20), and made them all meet in himself, Eph 1:10.
2. The encouraging words Jacob heard. God now brought him into the wilderness, and spoke comfortably to him, spoke from the head of the ladder; for all the glad tidings we receive from heaven come through Jesus Christ.
(1.) The former promises made to his father were repeated and ratified to him, Gen 28:13, Gen 28:14. In general, God intimated to him that he would be the same to him that he had been to Abraham and Isaac. Those that tread in the steps of their godly parents are interested in their covenant and entitled to their privileges. Particularly, [1.] The land of Canaan is settled upon him, the land whereon thou liest; as if by his lying so contentedly upon the bare ground he had taken livery and seisin of the whole land. [2.] It is promised him that his posterity should multiply exceedingly as the dust of the earth - that, though he seemed now to be plucked off as a withered branch, yet he should become a flourishing tree, that should send out his boughs unto the sea. These were the blessings with which his father had blessed him (Gen 28:3, Gen 28:4), and God here said Amen to them, that he might have strong consolation. [3.] It is added that the Messiah should come from his loins, in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed. Christ is the great blessing of the world. All that are blessed, whatever family they are of, are blessed in him, and none of any family are excluded from blessedness in him, but those that exclude themselves.
(2.) Fresh promises were made him, accommodated to his present condition, Gen 28:15. [1.] Jacob was apprehensive of danger from his brother Esau; but God promises to keep him. Note, Those are safe whom god protects, whoever pursues them. [2.] He had now a long journey before him, had to travel alone, in an unknown road, to an unknown country; but, behold, I am with thee, says God. Note, Wherever we are, we are safe, and may be easy, if we have God&#039;s favourable presence with us. [3.] He knew not, but God foresaw, what hardships he should meet with in his uncle&#039;s service, and therefore promises to preserve him in all places. Note, God knows how to give his people graces and comforts accommodated to the events that shall be, as well as to those that are. [4.] He was now going as an exile into a place far distant, but God promises him to bring him back again to this land. Note, He that preserves his people&#039;s going out will also take care of their coming in, Psa 121:8. [5.] He seemed to be forsaken of all his friends, but God here gives him this assurance, I will not leave thee. Note, Whom God loves he never leaves. This promise is sure to all the seed, Heb 13:5. [6.] Providences seemed to contradict the promises; he is therefore assured of the performance of them in their season: All shall be done that I have spoken to thee of. Note, Saying and doing are not two things with God, whatever they are with us.</p>

<p>Two veils are here ordered to be made, 1. One for a partition between the holy place and the most holy, which not only forbade any to enter, but forbade them so much as to look into the holiest of all, Exo 26:31, Exo 26:33. Under that dispensation, divine grace was veiled, but now we behold it with open face, Co2 3:18. The apostle tells us (Heb 9:8, Heb 9:9) what was the meaning of this veil; it intimated that the ceremonial law could not make the comers thereunto perfect, nor would the observance of it bring men to heaven; the way into the holiest of all was not made manifest while the first tabernacle was standing; life and immortality lay concealed till they were brought to light by the gospel, which was therefore signified by the rending of this veil at the death of Christ, Mat 27:51. We have not boldness to enter into the holiest, in all acts of devotion, by the blood of Jesus, yet such as obliges us to a holy reverence and a humble sense of our distance. 2. Another veil was for the outer door of the tabernacle, Exo 26:36, Exo 26:37. Through this first veil the priests went in every day to minister in the holy place, but not the people, Heb 9:6. This veil, which was all the defence the tabernacle had against thieves and robbers, might easily be broken through, for it could be neither locked nor barred, and the abundance of wealth in the tabernacle, one would think, might be a temptation; but by leaving it thus exposed, (1.) The priests and Levites would be so much the more obliged to keep a strict watch upon it, and, (2.) God would show his care of his church on earth, though it is weak and defenceless, and continually exposed. A curtain shall be (if God please to make it so) as strong a defence to his house as gates of brass and bars of iron.</p>

<p>Here, I. Deborah describes the distressed state of Israel under the tyranny of Jabin, that the greatness of their trouble might make their salvation appear the more illustrious and the more gracious (Jdg 5:6): From the days of Shamgar, who did something towards the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines, to the days of Jael, the present day, in which Jael has so signalized herself, the country has been in a manner desolate. 1. No trade. For want of soldiers to protect men of business in their business from the incursions of the enemy, and for want of magistrates to restrain and punish thieves and robbers among them (men of broken fortunes and desperate spirits, that, having no employment, took to rob on the highroad), all commerce ceased, and the highways were unoccupied; no caravans of merchants, as formerly. 2. No travelling. Whereas in times when there was some order and government the travellers might be safe in the open roads, and the robbers were forced to lurk in the by-ways, no, on the contrary, the robbers insulted on the open roads without check, and the honest travellers were obliged to sculk and walk through by-ways, in continual frights. 3. No tillage. The fields must needs be laid waste and unoccupied when the inhabitants of the villages, the country farmers, ceased from their employment, quitted their houses which were continually alarmed and plundered by the banditti, and were obliged to take shelter for themselves and their families in walled and fenced cities. 4. No administration of justice. There was war in the gates where their courts were kept, Jdg 5:8. So that it was not till this salvation was wrought that the people of the Lord durst go down to the gates, Jdg 5:11. The continual incursions of the enemy deprived the magistrates of the dignity, and the people of the benefit, of their government. 5. No peace to him that went out nor to him that came in. The gates through which they passed and repassed were infested by the enemy; nay, the places of drawing water were alarmed by the archers - a mighty achievement to terrify the drawers of water. 6. Neither arms nor spirit to help themselves with, not a shield nor spear seen among forty thousand, Jdg 5:8. Either they were disarmed by their oppressors, or they themselves neglected the art of war; so that, though they had spears and shields, they were not to be seen, but were thrown by and suffered to rust, they having neither skill nor will to use them.
II. She shows in one word what it was that brought all this misery upon them: They chose new gods, Jdg 5:8. It was their idolatry that provoked God to give them up thus into the hands of their enemies. The Lord their God was one Lord, but this would not content them: they must have more, many more, still more. Their God was the Ancient of days, still the same, and therefore they grew weary of him, and must have new gods, which they were as fond of as children of new clothes, names newly invented, heroes newly canonized. Their fathers, when put to their choice, chose the Lord for their God (Jos 24:21), but they would not abide by that choice, they must have gods of their own choosing.
III. She takes notice of God&#039;s great goodness to Israel in raising up such as should redress these grievances. Herself first (Jdg 5:7): Till that I Deborah arose, to restrain and punish those who disturbed the public peace, and protect men in their business, and then the face of things was changed for the better quickly; those beasts of prey retired upon the breaking forth of this joyful light, and man went forth again to his work and labour, Psa 104:22, Psa 104:23. Thus she became a mother in Israel, a nursing mother, such was the affection she bore to her people, and such the care and pains she took for the public welfare. Under her there were other governors of Israel (Jdg 5:9), who, like her, had done their part as governors to reform the people, and then, like her, offered themselves willingly to serve in the war, not insisting upon the exemption which their dignity and office entitled them to, when the had so fair an opportunity of appearing in their country&#039;s cause; and no doubt the example of the governors influenced the people in like manner willingly to offer themselves, Jdg 5:2. Of these governors she says, My heart is towards them, that is, &quot;I truly love and honour them; they have won my heart for ever; I shall never forget them.&quot; Note, Those are worthy of double honour that recede voluntarily from the demands of their honour to serve God and his church.
IV. She calls upon those who had a particular share in the advantages of this great salvation to offer up particular thanks to God for it, Jdg 5:10, Jdg 5:11. Let every man speak as he found of the goodness of God in this happy change of the posture of public affairs. 1. You that ride on white asses, that is, the nobility and gentry. Horses were little used in that county; they had, it is probable, a much better breed of asses than we have; but persons of quality, it seems, were distinguished by the colour of the asses they rode on; the white being more rare were therefore more valued. Notice is taken of Abdon&#039;s sons and grandsons riding on ass-colts, as indicating them to be men of distinction, Jdg 12:14. Let such as are by this salvation restored, not only to their liberty as other Israelites, but to their dignity, speak God&#039;s praises. 2. Let those that sit in judgment be sensible of it, and thankful for it as a very great mercy, that they may sit safely there, that the sword of justice is not struck out of their hand by the sword of war. 3. Let those that walk by the way, and meet with none there to make them afraid, speak to themselves in pious meditations, and to their fellow-travellers in religious discourses, of the goodness of God in ridding the roads of those banditti that had so long infested them. 4. Let those that draw in peace, and have not their wells taken from them, or stopped up, nor are in danger of being caught by the enemy when they go forth to draw, there, where they find themselves so much more safe and easy than they have been, there let them rehearse the acts of the Lord, not Deborah&#039;s acts, nor Barak&#039;s, but the Lord&#039;s, taking notice of his hand making peace in their borders, and creating a defence upon all the glory. This is the Lord&#039;s doing. Observe in these acts of his, (1.) Justice executed on his daring enemies. They are the righteous acts of the Lord. See him pleading a righteous cause, and sitting in the throne judging aright, and give him glory as the Judge of all the earth. (2.) Kindness shown to his trembling people, the inhabitants of the villages, who lay most open to the enemy, had suffered most, and were most in danger, Eze 38:11. It is the glory of God to protect those that are most exposed, and to help the weakest. Let us all take notice of the share we in particular have in the public peace and tranquility, the inhabitants of the villages especially, and give God the praise of it.</p>

<p>We have here, I. Israel&#039;s sin renewed: They did evil in the sight of the Lord, Jdg 6:1. The burnt child dreads the fire; yet this perverse unthinking people, that had so often smarted sorely for their idolatry, upon a little respite of God&#039;s judgments return to it again. This people hath a revolting rebellious heart, not kept in awe by the terror of God&#039;s judgments, nor engaged in honour and gratitude by the great things he had done for them to keep themselves in his love. The providence of God will not change the hearts and lives of sinners.
II. Israel&#039;s troubles repeated. This would follow of course; let all that sin expect to suffer; let all that return to folly expect to return to misery. With the froward God will show himself froward (Psa 18:26), and will walk contrary to those that walk contrary to him, Lev 26:21, Lev 26:24. Now as to this trouble, 1. It arose from a very despicable enemy. God delivered them into the hand of Midian (Jdg 6:1), not Midian in the south where Jethro lived, but Midian in the east that joined to Moab (Num 22:4), a people that all men despised as uncultivated and unintelligent; hence we read not here of any king, lord, or general, that they had, but the force with which they destroyed Israel was an undisciplined mob; and, which made it the more grievous, they were a people that Israel had formerly subdued, and in a manner destroyed (see Num 31:7), and yet by this time (nearly 200 years after) the poor remains of them were so multiplied, and so magnified, that they were capable of being made a very severe scourge to Israel. Thus God moved them to jealousy with those who were not a people, even a foolish nation, Deu 32:21. The meanest creature will serve to chastise those that have made the great Creator their enemy. And, when those we are authorized to rule prove rebellious and disobedient to us, it concerns us to enquire whether we have not been so to our sovereign Ruler. 2. It arose to a very formidable height (Jdg 6:2): The hand of Midian prevailed, purely by their multitude. God had promised to increase Israel as the sand on the sea shore; but their sin stopped their growth and diminished them, and then their enemies, though otherwise every way inferior to them, overpowered them with numbers. They came upon them as grasshoppers for multitude (Jdg 6:5), not in a regular army to engage them in the field, but in a confused swarm to plunder the country, quarter themselves upon it, and enrich themselves with its spoils - bands of robbers, and no better. And sinful Israel, being separated by sin from God, had not spirit to make head against them. Observe the wretched havoc that these Midianites made with their bands of plunderers in Israel. Here we have, (1.) The Israelites imprisoned, or rather imprisoning themselves, in dens and caves, Jdg 6:2. This was owing purely to their own timorousness and faint-heartedness, that they would rather fly than fight; it was the effect of a guilty conscience, which made them tremble at the shaking of a leaf, and the just punishment of their apostasy from God, who thus fought against them with those very terrors with which he would otherwise have fought for them. Had it not been for this, we cannot but think Israel a match for the Midianites, and able enough to make head against them; but the heart that departs from God is lost, not only to that which is good, but to that which is great. Sin dispirits men, and makes them sneak into dens and caves. The day will come when chief captains and mighty men will call in vain to rocks and mountains to hide them. (2.) The Israelites impoverished, greatly impoverished, Jdg 6:6. The Midianites and the other children of the east that joined with them to live by spoil and rapine (as long before the Sabeans and Chaldeans did that plundered Job, free-booters) made frequent incursions into the land of Canaan. This fruitful land was a great temptation to them; and the sloth and luxury into which the Israelites had sunk by forty years&#039; rest made them and their substance an easy prey to them. They came up against them (Jdg 6:3), pitched their camps among them (Jdg 6:4), and brought their cattle with them, particularly camels innumerable (Jdg 6:5), not a flying party to make a sally upon them and be gone presently, but they resolved to force their way, and penetrated through the heart of the country as far as Gaza on the western side, Jdg 6:4. They let the Israelites alone to sow their ground, but towards harvest they came and seized all, and ate up and destroyed it, both grass and corn, and when they went away took with them the sheep and oxen, so that in short they left no sustenance for Israel, except what was privately taken by the rightful owners into the dens and caves. Now here we may see, [1.] The justice of God in the punishment of their sin. They had neglected to honour God with their substance in tithes and offerings, and had prepared that for Baal with which God should have been served, and now God justly sends an enemy to take it away in the season thereof, Hos 2:8, Hos 2:9. [2.] The consequence of God&#039;s departure from a people; when he goes all good goes and all mischiefs break in. When Israel kept in with God, they reaped what others sowed (Jos 24:13; Psa 105:44); but now that God had forsaken them others reaped what they sowed. Let us take occasion from this to bless God for our national peace and tranquillity, that we eat the labour of our hands.
III. Israel&#039;s sense of God&#039;s hand revived at last. Seven years, year after year, did the Midianites make these inroads upon them, each we may suppose worse than the other (Jdg 6:1), until at last, all other succours failing, Israel cried unto the Lord (Jdg 6:6), for crying to Baal ruined them, and would not help them. When God judges he will overcome; and sinners shall be made either to bend or break before him.</p>

<p>The Danites had sent out their spies to find out a country for them, and they sped well in their search; but here, now that they came to the place (for till this brought it to their mind it does not appear that they had mentioned it to their brethren), they oblige them with a further discovery - they can tell them where there are gods: &quot;Here, in these houses, there are an ephod, and teraphim, and a great many fine things for devotion, such as we have not the like in our country; now therefore consider what you have to do, Jdg 18:14. We consulted them, and had a good answer from them; they are worth having, nay, they are worth stealing (that is, having upon the worst terms), and, if we can but make ourselves masters of these gods, we may the better hope to prosper, and make ourselves masters of Laish.&quot; So far they were in the right, that it was desirable to have God&#039;s presence with them, but wretchedly mistaken when they took these images (which were fitter to be used in a puppet-play than in acts of devotion) for tokens of God&#039;s presence. They thought an oracle would be pretty company for them in their enterprise, and instead of a council of war to consult upon every emergency; and, the place they were going to settle in being so far from Shiloh, they thought they had more need of a house of gods among themselves than Micah had that lived so near to it. They might have made as good an ephod and teraphim themselves as these were, and such as would have served their purpose every whit as well; but the reputation which they found them in possession of (though they had had that reputation but a while) amused them into a strange veneration for this house of gods, which they would soon have dropped if they had had so much sense as to enquire into its origin, and examine whether there were any thing divine in its institution. Being determined to take these gods along with them, we are here told how they stole the images, cajoled the priest, and frightened Micah from attempting to rescue them.
I. The five men that knew the house and the avenues to it, and particularly the chapel, went in and fetched out the images, with the ephod, and teraphim, and all the appurtenances, while the 600 kept the priest in talk at the gate, Jdg 18:16-18. See what little care this sorry priest took of his gods; while he was sauntering at the gate, and gazing at the strangers, his treasure (such as it was) was gone. See how impotent these sorry gods were, that could not keep themselves from being stolen. It is mentioned as the reproach of idols that they themselves had gone into captivity, Isa 46:2. O the sottishness of these Danites! How could they imagine those gods should protect them that could not keep themselves from being stolen? Yet because they went by the name of gods, as if it were not enough that they had with them the presence of the invisible God, nor that they stood in relation to the tabernacle, where there were even visible tokens of his presence, nothing will serve them but they must have gods to go before them, not of their own making indeed, but, which was as bad, of their own stealing. Their idolatry began in theft, a proper prologue for such an opera. In order to the breaking of the second commandment, they begin with the eighth, and take their neighbour&#039;s goods to make them their gods. The holy God hates robbery for burnt-offerings, but the devil loves it. Had these Danites seized the images to deface and abolish them, and the priest to punish him, they would have done like Israelites indeed, and would have appeared jealous for their God as their fathers had done (Jos 22:16); but to take them for their own use was such a complicated crime as showed that they neither feared God nor regarded man, but were perfectly lost both to godliness and honesty.
II. They set upon the priest, and flattered him into a good humour, not only to let the gods go, but to go himself along with them; for without him they knew not well how to make use of the gods. Observe, 1. How they tempted him, Jdg 18:19. They assured him of better preferment with them than what he now had. It would be more honour and profit to be chaplain to a regiment (for they were no more, though they called themselves a tribe) than to be only a domestic chaplain to a private gentleman. Let him go with them, and he shall have more dependants on him, more sacrifices brought to his altar, and more fees for consulting his teraphim, than he had here. 2. How they won him. A little persuasion served: His heart was glad, Jdg 18:20. The proposal took well enough with his rambling fancy, which would never let him stay long at a place, and gratified his covetousness and ambition. He had no reason to say but that he was well off where he was; Micah had not deceived him, nor changed his wages. He was not moved with any remorse of conscience for attending on a graven image: had he gone away to Shiloh to minister to the Lord&#039;s priests, according to the duty of a Levite, he might have been welcome there (Deu 18:6), and his removal would have been commendable; but, instead of this, he takes the images with him, and carries the infection of the idolatry into a whole city. It would have been very unjust and ungrateful to Micah if he had only gone away himself, but it was much more so to take the images along with him, which he knew the heart of Micah was set upon. Yet better could not be expected from a treacherous Levite. What house can be sure of him who has forsaken the house of the Lord? Or what friend will he be true to that has been false to his God? He could not pretend that he was under compulsive force, for he was glad in his heart to go. If ten shekels won him (as bishop Hall expresses it), eleven would lose him; for what can hold those that have made shipwreck of a good conscience? The hireling flees because he is a hireling. The priest and his gods went in the midst of the people. There they placed him, that they might secure him either from going back himself, if his mind should change, or from being fetched back by Micah; or perhaps this post was assigned to him in imitation of the order of Israel&#039;s march through the wilderness, in which the ark and the priests went in the midst of their camp.
III. They frightened Micah back when he pursued them to recover his gods. As soon as ever he perceived that his chapel was plundered, and his chaplain had run away from him, he mustered all the forces he could and pursued the robbers, Jdg 18:22. His neighbours, and perhaps tenants, that used to join with him in his devotions, were forward to help him on this occasion; they got together, and pursued the robbers, who, having their children and cattle before them (Jdg 18:21), could make no great haste, so that they soon overtook them, hoping by strength of reason to recover what was stolen, for the disproportion of their numbers was such that they could not hope to do it by strength of arm. The pursuers called after them, desiring to speak a word with them; those in the rear (where it is probable they posted the fiercest and strongest of their company, expecting there to be attacked) turned about and asked Micah what ailed him that he was so much concerned, and what he would have, Jdg 18:23. He argues with them, and pleads his right, which he thought should prevail; but they, in answer, plead their might, which, it proved, did prevail; for it is common that might overcomes right.
1. He insists upon the wrong they had certainly done him (Jdg 18:24): &quot;You have taken away my gods, my images of God, which I have an incontestable title to, for I made them myself, and which I have such an affection for that I am undone if I lose them; for what have I more that will do me any good if these be lost?&quot; Now, (1.) This discovers to us the folly of idolaters, and the power that Satan has over them. What a folly was it for him to call those his gods which he had made, when he only that made us is to be worshipped by us as a God! Folly indeed to set his heart upon such silly idle things, and to look upon himself as undone when he had lost them! (2.) This may discover to us our spiritual idolatry. That creature which we place our happiness in, which we set our affections inordinately upon, and which we can by no means find in our hearts to part with, of which we say, &quot;What have we more?&quot; that we make an idol of. That is put in God&#039;s place, and is a usurper, which we are concerned about as if our life and comfort, our hope and happiness, and our all, were bound up in it. But, (3.) If all people will thus walk in the name of their god, shall we not be in like manner affected towards our God, the true God? Let us reckon the having of an interest in God and communion with him incomparably the richest portion, and the loss of God the sorest loss. Woe unto us if he depart, for what have we more? Deserted souls that are lamenting after the Lord may well wonder, as Micah did, that you should ask what ails them; for the tokens of God&#039;s favour are suspended, his comforts are withdrawn, and what have they more?
2. They insist upon the mischief they would certainly do him if he prosecuted his demand. They would not hear reason, nor do justice, nor so much as offer to pay him the prime cost he had been at upon those images, nor promise to make restitution of what they had taken when they had served their present purpose with them in this expedition and had time to copy them and make others like them for themselves: much less had they any compassion for a loss he so bitterly lamented. They would not so much as give him good words, but resolved to justify their robbery with murder if he did not immediately let fall his claims, Jdg 18:25. &quot;Take heed lest angry fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, and that is worse than losing thy gods.&quot; Wicked and unreasonable men reckon it a great provocation to be asked to do justice, and support themselves by their power against right and reason. Micah&#039;s crime is asking his own, yet, for this, he is in danger of losing his life and the lives of his household. Micah has not courage enough to venture his life for the rescue of his gods, so little opinion has he of their being able to protect him and bear him out, and therefore tamely gives them up (Jdg 18:26): He turned and went back to his house; and if the loss of his idols did but convince him (as, one would think, it should) of their vanity and impotency, and his own folly in setting his heart upon them, and send him back to the true God from whom he had revolted, he that lost them had a much better bargain than those that by force of arms carried them off. If the loss of our idols cure us of the love of them, and make us say, What have we to do any more with idols? the loss will be unspeakable gain. See Isa 2:20; Isa 30:22.</p>

<p>the men that were in the houses near to Micah&#039;s house were gathered together--The robbers of the chapel being soon detected, a hot pursuit was forthwith commenced by Micah, at the head of a considerable body of followers. The readiness with which they joined in the attempt to recover the stolen articles affords a presumption that the advantages of the chapel had been open to all in the neighborhood; and the importance which Micah, like Laban, attached to his teraphim, is seen by the urgency with which he pursued the thieves, and the risk of his life in attempting to procure their restoration. Finding his party, however, not a match for the Danites, he thought it prudent to desist, well knowing the rule which was then prevalent in the land, that

&quot;They should take who had the power,

And they should keep who could.&quot;</p>

<p>We have here an account of the murder of Abner by Joab, and David&#039;s deep resentment of it.
I. Joab very insolently fell foul upon David for treating with Abner. He happened to be abroad upon service when Abner was with David, pursuing a troop, either of Philistines or of Saul&#039;s party; but, upon his return, he was informed that Abner was just gone (Sa2 3:22, Sa2 3:23), and that a great many kind things had passed between David and him. He had all the reason in the world to be satisfied of David&#039;s prudence and to acquiesce in the measures he took, knowing him to be a wise and good man himself and under a divine conduct in all his affairs; and yet, as if he had the same sway in David&#039;s cause that Abner had in Ish-bosheth&#039;s, he chides David, and reproaches him to his face as impolitic (Sa2 3:24, Sa2 3:25): What hast thou done? As if David were accountable to him for what he did: &quot;Why hast thou sent him away, when thou mightest have made him a prisoner? He came as a spy, and will certainly betray thee.&quot; I know not whether to wonder more that Joab had impudence enough to give such an affront to his prince or that David had patience enough to take it. He does, in effect, call David a fool when he tells him he knew Abner came to deceive him and yet he trusted him. We find no answer that David gave him, not because he feared him, as Ish-bosheth did Abner (Sa2 3:11), but because he despised him, or because Joab had not so much good manners as to stay for an answer.
II. He very treacherously sent for Abner back, and, under colour of a private conference with him, barbarously killed him with his own hand. That he made use of David&#039;s name, under pretence of giving him some further instructions, is intimated in that, but David knew it not, Sa2 3:26. Abner, designing no harm, feared none, but very innocently returned to Hebron, and, when he found Joab waiting for him at the gate, turned aside with him to speak with him privately, forgetting what he himself had said when he slew Asahel, How shall I hold up my face to Joab thy brother? (Sa2 2:22), and there Joab murdered him (Sa2 3:27), and it is intimated (Sa2 3:30) that Abishai was privy to the design, and was aiding and abetting, and would have come in to his brother&#039;s assistance if there had been occasion; he is therefore charged as an accessary: Joab and Abishai slew Abner, though perhaps he only knew it who is privy to the thoughts and intents of men&#039;s hearts. Now in this, 1. It is certain that the Lord was righteous. Abner had maliciously, and against the convictions of his conscience, opposed David. He had now basely deserted Ish-bosheth, and betrayed him, under pretence of regard to God and Israel, but really from a principle of pride, and revenge, and impatience of control. God will not therefore use so bad a man, though David might, in so good a work as the uniting of Israel. Judgments are prepared for such scorners as Abner was. But, 2. It is as certain that Joab was unrighteous, and, in what he did, did wickedly. David was a man after God&#039;s own heart, but could not have those about him, no, not in places of the greatest trust, after his own heart. Many a good prince, and a good master, has been forced to employ bad men. (1.) Even the pretence for doing this was very unjust. Abner had indeed slain his brother Asahel, and Joab and Abishai pretended herein to be the avengers of his blood (Sa2 3:27, Sa2 3:30); but Abner slew Asahel in an open war, wherein Abner indeed had given the challenge, but Joab himself had accepted it and had slain many of Abner&#039;s friends. He did it likewise in his own defence, and not till he had given him fair warning (which he would not take), and he did it with reluctancy; but Joab here shed the blood of war in peace, Kg1 2:5. (2.) That which we have reason to think was at the bottom of Joab&#039;s enmity to Abner made it much worse. Joab was now general of David&#039;s forces; but, if Abner should come into his interest, he would possibly be preferred before him, being a senior officer, and more experienced in the art of war. This Joab was jealous of, and could better bear the guilt of blood than the thoughts of a rival. (3.) He did it treacherously, and under pretence of speaking peaceably to him, Deu 27:24. Had he challenged him, he would have done like a soldier; but to assassinate him was done villainously and like a coward. His words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords, Psa 55:21. Thus he basely slew Amasa, Sa2 20:9, Sa2 20:10. (4.) The doing of it was a great affront and injury to David, who was now in treaty with Abner, as Joab knew. Abner was now actually in his master&#039;s service, so that, through his side, he struck at David himself. (5.) It was a great aggravation of the murder that he did it in the gate, openly and avowedly, as one that was not ashamed, nor could blush. The gate was the place of judgment and the place of concourse, to that he did it in defiance of justice, both the just sentence of the magistrates and the just resentment of the crowd, as one that neither feared God nor regarded men, but thought himself above all control: and Hebron was a Levites&#039; city and a city of refuge.
III. David laid deeply to heart and in many ways expressed his detestation of this execrable villany.
1. He washed his hands from the guilt of Abner&#039;s blood. Lest any should suspect that Joab had some secret intimation from David to do as he did (and the rather because he went so long unpunished), he here solemnly appeals to God concerning his innocency: I and my kingdom are guiltless (and my kingdom is so because I am so) before the Lord for ever, Sa2 3:28. It is a comfort to be able to say, when any bad thing is done, that we had no hand in it. We have not shed this blood, Deu 21:7. However we may be censured or suspected, our hearts shall not reproach us.
2. He entailed the curse for it upon Joab and his family (Sa2 3:29): &quot;Let it rest on the head of Joab. Let the blood cry against him, and let divine vengeance follow him. Let the iniquity be visited upon his children and children&#039;s children, in some hereditary disease or other. The longer the punishment is delayed, the longer let it last when it shall come. Let his posterity be stigmatized, blemished with an issue or a leprosy, which will shut them out from society; let them be beggars, or cripples, or come to some untimely end, that it may be said, He is one of Joab&#039;s race.&quot; This intimates that the guilt of blood brings a curse upon families; if men do not avenge it, God will, and will lay up the iniquity for the children. But methinks a resolute punishment of the murderer himself would better have become David than this passionate imprecation of God&#039;s judgments upon his posterity.
3. He called upon all about him, even Joab himself, to lament the death of Abner (Sa2 3:31): Rend your clothes and mourn before Abner, that is, before the hearse of Abner, as Abraham is said to mourn before his dead (Gen 23:2, Gen 23:3), and he gives a reason why they should attend his funeral with sincere and solemn mourning (Sa2 3:38), because there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel. His alliance to Saul, his place as general, his interest, and the great services he had formerly done, were enough to denominate him a prince and a great man. When he could not call him a saint or a good man, he said nothing of that, but what was true he gave him the praise of, though he had been his enemy, that he was a prince and a great man. &quot;Such a man has fallen in Israel, and fallen this day, just when he was doing the best deed he ever did in his life, this day, when he was likely to be so serviceable to the public peace and welfare and could so ill be spared.&quot; (1.) Let them all lament it. The humbling change death puts all men under is to be lamented, especially as affecting princes and great men. Alas! alas! (see Rev 18:10) how mean, how little, are those made by death who made themselves the terror of the mighty in the land of the living! But we are especially obliged to lament the fall of useful men in the midst of their usefulness and when there is most need of them. A public loss must be every man&#039;s grief, for every man shares in it. Thus David took care that honour should be done to the memory of a man of merit, to animate others. (2.) Let Joab, in a particular manner, lament it, which he has less heart but more reason to do than any of them. If he could be brought to do it sincerely, it would be an expression of repentance for his sin in slaying him. If he did it in show only, as it is likely he did, yet it was a sort of penance imposed upon him, and a present commutation of the punishment. If he do not as yet expiate the murder with his blood, let him do something towards it with tears. This, perhaps, Joab submitted to with no great reluctancy, now he had gained his point. Now that he is on the bier, no matter in what pomp he lies. Sit divus, modo non sit vivus - Let him be canonized, so that he be but killed.
4. David himself followed the corpse as chief mourner, and made a funeral oration at the grave. He attended the bier (Sa2 3:31) and wept at the grave, Sa2 3:32. Though Abner had been his enemy, and might possibly have proved no very firm friend, yet because he had been a man of bravery in the field, and might have done great service in the public counsels at this critical juncture, all former quarrels are forgotten and David is a true mourner for his fall. What he said over the grave fetched fresh floods of tears from the eyes of all that were present, when they thought they had already paid the debt in full (Sa2 3:33, Sa2 3:34): Died Abner as a fool dieth? (1.) He speaks as one vexed that Abner was fooled out of his life, that so great a man as he, so famed for conduct and courage, should be imposed upon by a colour of friendship, slain by surprise, and so die as a fool dies. The wisest and stoutest of men have no fence against treachery. To see Abner, who thought himself the main hinge on which the great affairs of Israel turned, so considerable as himself to be able to turn the scale of a trembling government, his head full of great projects and great prospects, to see him made a fool of by a base rival, and falling on a sudden a sacrifice to his ambition and jealousy - this stains the pride of all glory, and should put one out of conceit with worldly grandeur. Put not your trust in princes, Psa 146:3, Psa 146:4. And let us therefore make that sure which we cannot be fooled out of. A man may have his life, and all that is dear to him, taken from him, and not be able to prevent it with all his wisdom, care, and integrity; but there is that which no thief can break through to steal. See here how much more we are beholden to God&#039;s providence than to our own prudence for the continuance of our lives and comforts. Were it not for the hold God has of the consciences of bad men, how soon would the weak and innocent become an easy prey to the strong and merciless and the wisest die as fools! Or, (2.) He speaks as one boasting that Abner did not fool himself out of his life: &quot;Died Abner as a fool dies? No, he did not, not as a criminal, a traitor or felon, that forfeits his life into the hands of public justice; his hands were not pinioned, nor his feet fettered, as those of malefactors are: Abner falls not before just men, by a judicial sentence; but as a man, an innocent man, falleth before wicked men, thieves and robbers, so fellest thou.&quot; Died Abner as Nabal died? so the Septuagint reads it. Nabal died as he lived, like himself, like a sot; but Abner&#039;s fate was such as might have been the fate of the wisest and best man in the world. Abner did not throw away his life as Asahel did, who wilfully ran upon the spear, after fair warning, but he was struck by surprise. Note, It is a sad thing to die like a fool, as those do that in any way shorten their own days, and much more those that make no provision for another world.
5. He fasted all that day, and would by no means be persuaded to eat any thing till night, Sa2 3:35. It was then the custom of great mourners to refrain for the time from bodily refreshments, as Sa2 1:12; Sa1 31:13. How incongruous is it then to turn the house of mourning into a house of feasting! This respect which David paid to Abner was very pleasing to the people and satisfied them that he was not, in the least, accessory to the murder (Sa2 3:36, Sa2 3:37), of which he was solicitous to avoid the suspicion, lest Joab&#039;s villany should make him odious, as that of Simeon and Levi did Jacob, Gen 34:30. On this occasion it is said, Whatever the king did pleased all the people. This intimates, (1.) His good affection to them. He studied to please them in every thing and carefully avoided what might be disobliging. (2.) Their good opinion of him. They thought every thing he did well done. Such a mutual willingness to please, and easiness to be pleased, will make every relation comfortable.
6. He bewailed it that he could not with safety do justice on the murderers, Sa2 3:30. He was weak, his kingdom was newly planted, and a little shake would overthrow it. Joab&#039;s family had a great interest, were bold and daring, and to make them his enemies now might be of bad consequence. These sons of Zeruiah were too hard for him, too big for the law to take hold of; and therefore, though by man, by the magistrate, the blood of a murderer should be shed (Gen 9:6), David bears the sword in vain, and contents himself, as a private person, to leave them to the judgment of God: The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness. Now this is a diminution, (1.) To David&#039;s greatness. He is anointed king, and yet is kept in awe by his own subjects, and some of them are too hard for him. Who would be fond of power when a man may have the name of it, and must be accountable for it, and yet be hampered in the use of it? (2.) To David&#039;s goodness. He ought to have done his duty, and trusted God with the issue. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum - Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall asunder. If the law had had its course against Joab, perhaps the murder of Ishbosheth, Amnon, and others, would have been prevented. It was carnal policy and cruel pity that spared Joab. Righteousness supports the throne and will never shake it. Yet it was only a reprieve that David gave to Joab; on his death-bed he left it to Solomon (who could the better wield the sword of justice because he had no occasion to draw the sword of war) to avenge the blood of Abner. Evil pursues sinners, and will overtake them at last. David preferred Abner&#039;s son Jaasiel, Ch1 27:21.</p>

<p>Though the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes was but briefly related, it is in these verses largely commented upon by our historian, and the reasons of it assigned, not taken from the second causes - the weakness of Israel, their impolitic management, and the strength and growing greatness of the Assyrian monarch (these things are overlooked) - but only from the First Cause. Observe, 1. It was the Lord that removed Israel out of his sight; whoever were the instruments, he was the author of this calamity. It was destruction from the Almighty; the Assyrian was but the rod of his anger, Isa 10:5. It was the Lord that rejected the seed of Israel, else their enemies could not have seized upon them, Kg2 17:20. Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord? Isa 43:24. We lose the benefit of national judgments if we do not eye the hand of God in them, and the fulfilling of the scripture, for that also is taken notice of here (Kg2 17:23): The Lord removed Israel out of his favour, and out of their own land, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. Rather shall heaven and earth pass than one tittle of God&#039;s word fall to the ground. When God&#039;s word and his works are compared, it will be found not only that they agree, but that they illustrate each other. But why would God ruin a people that were raised and incorporated, as Israel was, by miracles and oracles? Why would he undo that which he himself had done at so vast an expense? Was it purely an act of sovereignty? No, it was an act of necessary justice. For, 2. They provoked him to do this by their wickedness. Was it God&#039;s doing? Nay, it was their own; by their way and their doings they procured all this to themselves, and it was their own wickedness that did correct them. This the sacred historian shows here at large, that it might appear that God did them no wrong and that others might hear and fear. Come and see what it was that did all this mischief, that broke their power and laid their honour in the dust; it was sin; that, and nothing else, separated between them and God. This is here very movingly laid open as the cause of all the desolations of Israel. He here shows,
I. What God had done for Israel, to engage them to serve him. 1. He gave them their liberty (Kg2 17:7): He brought them from under the hand of Pharaoh who oppressed them, asserted their freedom (Israel is my son), and effected their freedom with a high hand. Thus they were bound in duty and gratitude to be his servants, for he had loosed their bonds; nor would he that rescued them out of the hand of the king of Egypt have contradicted himself so far as to deliver them into the hand of the king of Assyria, as he did, if they had not, by their iniquity, betrayed their liberty and sold themselves. 2. He gave them their law, and was himself their king. They were immediately under a divine regimen. They could not plead ignorance of good and evil, sin and duty, for God had particularly charged them against those very things which here he charges them with (Kg2 17:15), That they should not do like the heathen. Nor could they be in any doubt concerning their obligation to observe the laws which they are here charged with rejecting, for they were the commandments and statutes of the Lord their God (Kg2 17:13), so that no room was left to dispute whether they should keep them or no. He had not dealt so with other nations, Psa 147:19, Psa 147:20. 3. He gave them their land, for he cast out the heathen from before them (Kg2 17:8), to make room for them; and the casting out of them for their idolatries was as fair a warning as could be given to Israel not to do like them.
II. What they had done against God, notwithstanding these engagements which he had laid upon them. 1. In general. They sinned against the Lord their God (Kg2 17:7), they did those things that were not right (Kg2 17:9), but secretly. So wedded were they to their evil practices that when they could not do them publicly, could not for shame or could not for fear, they would do them secretly - an evidence of their atheism, that they thought what was done in secret was from under the eye of God himself and would not be required. Again, they wrought wicked things in such a direct contradiction to the divine law that they seemed as if they were done on purpose to provoke the Lord to anger (Kg2 17:11), in contempt of his authority and defiance of his justice. They rejected God&#039;s statutes and his covenant (Kg2 17:15), would not be bound up either by his command or the consent they themselves had given to the covenant, but threw off the obligations of both, and therefore God justly rejected them, Kg2 17:20. See Hos 4:6. They left all the commandments of the Lord their God (Kg2 17:16), left the way, left the work, which those commandments prescribed them and directed them in. Nay, lastly, they sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, that is, they wholly addicted themselves to sin, as slaves to the service of those to whom they are sold, and, by their obstinately persisting in sin, so hardened their own hearts that at length it had become morally impossible for them to recover themselves, as one that has sold himself has put his liberty past recall. 2. In particular. Though they were guilty (no doubt) of many immoralities, and violated all the commands of the second table, yet nothing is here specified, but their idolatry. This was the sin that did most easily beset them; this was, of all sins, most provoking to God: it was the spiritual adultery that broke the marriage-covenant, and was the inlet of all other wickedness. Hence it is again and again mentioned here as the sin that ruined them. (1.) They feared other gods (Kg2 17:7), that is, worshipped them and paid their homage to them, as if they feared their displeasure. (2.) They walked in the statutes of the heathen, which were contrary to God&#039;s statutes (Kg2 17:8), did as did the heathen (Kg2 17:11), went after the heathen that were round about them (Kg2 17:15), so prostituting the honour of their peculiarity, and defeating God&#039;s design concerning them, which was that they should be distinguished from the heathen. Must those that were taught of God go to school to the heathen - those that were appropriated to God take their measures from the nations that were abandoned by him? (3.) They walked in the statutes of the idolatrous kings of Israel (Kg2 17:8), in all the sins of Jeroboam, Kg2 17:22. When their kings assumed a power to alter and add to the divine institutions they submitted to them, and thought the command of their kings would bear them out in disobedience to the command of their God. (4.) They built themselves high places in all their cities, Kg2 17:9. If in any place there was but the tower of the watchmen (a country tower that had no walls, but only a tower to shelter the watch in time of danger), or but a lodge for shepherds, it must be honoured with a high place, and that with an altar. If there was a fenced city, it must be further fortified with a high place. Having forsaken God&#039;s only place, they knew no end of high places, in which every man followed his own fancy and directed his devotion to what god he pleased. Sacred things were hereby profaned and laid common, when their altars were as heaps in the furrows of the field, Hos 12:11. (5.) They set them up images and groves - Asherim (even wooden images, so some think the term, which we translate groves, should be rendered) or Ashtaroth (so others) - directed contrary to the second commandment, Kg2 17:10. They served idols (Kg2 17:12), the works of their own hands and creatures of their own fancy, though God had warned them particularly not to do this thing. (6.) They burnt incense in all the high places, to the honour of strange gods, for it was to the dishonour of the true God, Kg2 17:11. (7.) They followed vanity. Idols are called so, because they could do neither good nor evil, but were the most insignificant things that could be; those that worshipped them were like unto them, and so they became vain and good for nothing (Kg2 17:16), vain in their devotions, which were brutish and ridiculous, and so became vain in their whole conversation. (8.) Besides the molten images, even the two calves, they worshipped all the host of heaven - the sun, moon, and stars: for it is not meant of the heavenly host of angels; they could not rise so far above sensible things as to think of them. And, withal, they served Baal, the deified heroes of the Gentiles, Kg2 17:16. (9.) They caused their children to pass through the fire, in token of their dedicating them to their idols. (10.) They used divinations and enchantments, that they might receive directions from the gods to whom they paid their devotions.
III. What means God used with them, to bring them off from their idolatries, and to how little purpose. He testified against them, showed them their sins and warned them of the fatal consequences of them by all the prophets and all the seers (for so the prophets had been formerly called), and pressed them to turn from their evil ways, Kg2 17:13. We have read of prophets, more or less, in every reign. Though they had forsaken God&#039;s family of priests, he did not leave them without a succession of prophets, who made it their business to teach them the good knowledge of the Lord, but all in vain (Kg2 17:14); they would not hear, but hardened their necks, persisted in their idolatries, and were like their fathers, that would not bow their necks to God&#039;s yoke, because they did not believe in him, did not receive his truths, nor would venture upon his promises: it seems to refer to their fathers in the wilderness; the same sin that kept them out of Canaan turned these out, and that was unbelief.
IV. How God punished them for their sins. He was very angry with them (Kg2 17:18); for, in the matter of his worship, he is a jealous God, and resents nothing more deeply than giving that honour to any creature which is due to himself only. He afflicted them (Kg2 17:20) and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, in the days of the judges and of Saul, and afterwards in the days of most of their kings, to see if they would be awakened by the judgments of God to consider and amend their ways; but, when all these corrections did not prevail to drive out the folly, God first rent Israel from the house of David, under which they might have been happy. As Judah was hereby weakened, so Israel was hereby corrupted; for they made a man king who drove them from following the Lord and caused them to sin a great sin, Kg2 17:21. This was a national judgment, and the punishment of their former idolatries; and, at length, he removed them quite out of his sight (Kg2 17:18, Kg2 17:23), without giving them any hopes of a return out of their captivity.
Lastly, Here is a complaint against Judah in the midst of all (Kg2 17:19): Also Judah kept not the commandments of God; though they were not as yet quite so bad as Israel, yet they walked in the statutes of Israel; and this aggravated the sin of Israel, that they communicated the infection of it to Judah; see Eze 23:11. Those that bring sin into a country or family bring a plague into it and will have to answer for all the mischief that follows.</p>

<p>This account of Saul&#039;s death is the same with that which we had, Sa1 31:1, etc. We need not repeat the exposition of it. Only let us observe, 1. Princes sin and the people suffer for it. It was a bad time with Israel when they fled before the Philistines and fell down slain (Ch1 10:1), when they quitted their cities, and the Philistines came and dwelt in them, Ch1 10:7. We do not find that they were at this time guilty of idolatry, as they had been before, in the days of the judges, and were afterwards, in the days of the kings. Samuel had reformed them, and they were reformed: and yet they are thus given to the spoil and to the robbers. No doubt there was enough in them to deserve this judgment; but that which divine Justice had chiefly an eye to was the sin of Saul. Note, Princes and great men should in a special manner take heed of provoking God&#039;s wrath; for, if they kindle that fire, they know not how many may be consumed by it for their sakes. 2. Parents sin and the children suffer for it. When the measure of Saul&#039;s iniquity was full, and his day came to fall (which David foresaw, Sa1 26:10), he not only descended into battle and perished himself, but his sons (all but Ishbosheth) perished with him, and Jonathan among the rest, that gracious, generous man; for all things come alike to all. Thus was the iniquity of the fathers visited upon the children, and they fell as parts of the condemned father. Note, Those that love their seed must leave their sins, lest they perish not alone in their iniquity, but bring ruin on their families with themselves, or entail a curse upon them when they are gone. 3. Sinners sin and at length suffer for it themselves, though they be long reprieved; for, although sentence be not executed speedily, it will be executed. It was so upon Saul; and the manner of his fall was such as, in various particulars, answered to his sin. (1.) He had thrown a javelin more than once at David, and missed him; but the archers hit him, and he was wounded of the archers. (2.) He had commanded Doeg to slay the priests of the Lord; and now, in despair, he commands his armour-bearer to draw his sword and thrust him through. (3.) He had disobeyed the command of God in not destroying the Amalekites, and his armour-bearer disobeys him in not destroying him. (4.) He that was the murderer of the priests is justly left to himself to be his own murderer; and his family is cut off who cut off the city of the priests. See, and say, The Lord is righteous.</p>

<p>We have here a particular account of Job&#039;s troubles.
I. Satan brought them upon him on the very day that his children began their course of feasting, at their eldest brother&#039;s house (Job 1:13), where, he having (we may suppose) the double portion, the entertainment was the richest and most plentiful. The whole family, no doubt, was in perfect repose, and all were easy and under no apprehension of the trouble, now when they revived this custom; and this time Satan chose, that the trouble, coming now, might be the more grievous. The night of my pleasure has he turned into fear, Isa 21:4.
II. They all come upon him at once; while one messenger of evil tidings was speaking another came, and, before he had told his story, a third, and a fourth, followed immediately. Thus Satan, by the divine permission, ordered it, 1. That there might appear a more than ordinary displeasure of God against him in his troubles, and by that he might be exasperated against divine Providence, as if it were resolved, right or wrong, to ruin him, and not give him time to speak for himself. 2. That he might not have leisure to consider and recollect himself, and reason himself into a gracious submission, but might be overwhelmed and overpowered by a complication of calamities. If he have not room to pause a little, he will be apt to speak in haste, and then, if ever, he will curse his God. Note, The children of God are often in heaviness through manifold temptations; deep calls to deep; waves and billows come one upon the neck of another. Let one affliction therefore quicken and help us to prepare for another; for, how deep soever we have drunk of the bitter cup, as long as we are in this world we cannot be sure that we have drunk our share and that it will finally pass from us.
III. They took from him all that he had, and made a full end of his enjoyments. The detail of his losses answers to the foregoing inventory of his possessions.
1. He had 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 she-asses, and a competent number of servants to attend them; and all these he lost at once, Job 1:14, Job 1:15. The account he has of this lets him know, (1.) That it was not through any carelessness of his servants; for then his resentment might have spent itself upon them: The oxen were ploughing, not playing, and the asses not suffered to stray and so taken up as waifs, but feeding beside them, under the servant&#039;s eye, each in their place; and those that passed by, we may suppose, blessed them, and said, God speed the plough. Note, All our prudence, care, and diligence, cannot secure us from affliction, no, not from those afflictions which are commonly owing to imprudence and negligence. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman, though ever so wakeful, wakes but in vain. Yet it is some comfort under a trouble if it found us in the way of our duty, and not in any by-path. (2.) That is was through the wickedness of his neighbours the Sabeans, probably a sort of robbers that lived by spoil and plunder. They carried off the oxen and asses, and slew the servants that faithfully and bravely did their best to defend them, and one only escaped, not in kindness to him or his master, but that Job might have the certain intelligence of it by an eye-witness before he heard it by a flying report, which would have brought it upon him gradually. We have no reason to suspect that either Job or his servants had given any provocation to the Sabeans to make this inroad, but Satan put it into their hearts to do it, to do it now, and so gained a double point, for he made both Job to suffer and them to sin. Note, When Satan has God&#039;s permission to do mischief he will not want mischievous men to be his instruments in doing it, for he is a spirit that works in the children of disobedience.
2. He had 7000 sheep, and shepherds that kept them; and all those he lost at the same time by lightning, Job 1:16. Job was perhaps, in his own mind, ready to reproach the Sabeans, and fly out against them for their injustice and cruelty, when the next news immediately directs him to look upwards: The fire of God has fallen from heaven. As thunder is his voice, so lightning is his fire: but this was such an extraordinary lightning, and levelled so directly against Job, that all his sheep and shepherds were not only killed, but consumed by it at once, and one shepherd only was left alive to carry the news to poor Job. The devil, aiming to make him curse God and renounce his religion, managed this part of the trial very artfully, in order thereto. (1.) His sheep, with which especially he used to honour God in sacrifice, were all taken from him, as if God were angry at his offerings and would punish him in those very things which he had employed in his service. Having misrepresented Job to God as a false servant, in pursuance of his old design to set Heaven and earth at variance, he here misrepresented God to Jacob as a hard Master, who would not protect those flocks out of which he had so many burnt-offerings. This would tempt Job to say, It is in vain to serve God. (2.) The messenger called the lightning the fire of God (and innocently enough), but perhaps Satan thereby designed to strike into his mind this thought, that God had turned to be his enemy and fought against him, which was much more grievous to him than all the insults of the Sabeans. He owned (Job 31:23) that destruction from God was a terror to him. How terrible then were the tidings of this destruction, which came immediately from the hand of God! Had the fire from heaven consumed the sheep upon the altar, he might have construed it into a token of God&#039;s favour; but, the fire consuming them in the pasture, he could not but look upon it as a token of God&#039;s displeasure. There have not been the like since Sodom was burned.
3. He had 3000 camels, and servants tending them; and he lost them all at the same time by the Chaldeans, who came in three bands, and drove them away, and slew the servants, Job 1:17. If the fire of God, which fell upon Job&#039;s honest servants, who were in the way of their duty, had fallen upon the Sabean and Chaldean robbers who were doing mischief, God&#039;s judgments therein would have been like the great mountains, evident and conspicuous; but when the way of the wicked prospers, and they carry off their booty, while just and good men are suddenly cut off, God&#039;s righteousness is like the great deep, the bottom of which we cannot find, Psa 36:6.
4. His dearest and most valuable possessions were his ten children; and, to conclude the tragedy, news if brought him, at the same time, that they were killed and buried in the ruins of the house in which they were feasting, and all the servants that waited on them, except one that came express with the tidings of it, Job 1:18, Job 1:19. This was the greatest of Job&#039;s losses, and which could not but go nearest him; and therefore the devil reserved it for the last, that, if the other provocations failed, this might make him curse God. Our children are pieces of ourselves; it is very hard to part with them, and touches a good man in as tender a part as any. But to part with them all at once, and for them to be all cut off in a moment, who had been so many years his cares and hopes, went to the quick indeed. (1.) They all died together, and not one of them was left alive. David, though a wise and good man, was very much discomposed by the death of one son. How hard then did it bear upon poor Job who lost them all, and, in one moment, was written childless! (2.) They died suddenly. Had they been taken away by some lingering disease, he would have had notice to expect their death, and prepare for the breach; but this came upon him without giving him any warning. (3.) They died when they were feasting and making merry. Had they died suddenly when they were praying, he might the better have borne it. He would have hoped that death had found them in a good frame if their blood had been mingled with their feast, where he himself used to be jealous of them that they had sinned, and cursed God in their hearts - to have that day come upon them unawares, like a thief in the night, when perhaps their heads were overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness - this could not but add much to his grief, considering what a tender concern he always had for his children&#039;s souls, and that they were now out of the reach of the sacrifices he used to offer according to the number of them all. See how all things come alike to all. Job&#039;s children were constantly prayed for by their father, and lived in love one with another, and yet came to this untimely end. (4.) They died by a wind of the devil&#039;s raising, who is the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2), but it was looked upon to be an immediate hand of God, and a token of his wrath. So Bildad construed it (Job 8:4): Thy children have sinned against him, and he has cast them away in their transgression. (5.) They were taken away when he had most need of them to comfort him under all his other losses. Such miserable comforters are all creatures. In God only we have a present help at all times.</p>

<p>Chaldeans--not merely robbers as the Sabeans; but experienced in war, as is implied by &quot;they set in array three bands&quot; (Hab 1:6-8). RAWLINSON distinguishes three periods: 1. When their seat of empire was in the south, towards the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Chaldean period, from 2300 B.C. to 1500 B.C. In this period was Chedorlaomer (Gen 14:1), the Kudur of Hur or Ur of the Chaldees, in the Assyrian inscriptions, and the conqueror of Syria. 2. From 1500 to 625 B.C., the Assyrian period. 3. From 625 to 538 B.C. (when Cyrus the Persian took Babylon), the Babylonian period. &quot;Chaldees&quot; in Hebrew--Chasaim. They were akin, perhaps, to the Hebrews, as Abraham&#039;s sojourn in Ur, and the name &quot;Chesed,&quot; a nephew of Abraham, imply. The three bands were probably in order to attack the three separate thousands of Job&#039;s camels (Job 1:3).</p>

<p>A very warm dispute being begun between Job and his friends, Eliphaz here makes a fair motion to put the matter to a reference. In all debates perhaps the sooner this is done the better if the contenders cannot end it between themselves. So well assured is Eliphaz of the goodness of his own cause that he moves Job himself to choose the arbitrators (Job 5:1): Call now, if there be any that will answer thee; that is, 1. &quot;If there be any that suffer as thou sufferest. Canst thou produce an instance of any one that was really a saint that was reduced to such an extremity as thou art now reduced to? God never dealt with any that love his name as he deals with thee, and therefore surely thou art none of them.&quot; 2. &quot;If there be any that say as thou sayest. Did ever any good man curse his day as thou dost? Or will any of the saints justify thee in these heats or passions, or say that these are the spots of God&#039;s children? Thou wilt find none of the saints that will be either thy advocates or my antagonists. To which of the saints wilt thou turn? Turn to which thou wilt, and thou wilt find they are all of my mind. I have the communis sensus fidelium - the unanimous vote of the faithful on my side; they will all subscribe to what I am going to say.&quot; Observe, (1.) Good people are called saints even in the Old Testament; and therefore I know not why we should, in common speaking (unless because we must loqui cum vulgo - speak as our neighbours), appropriate the title to those of the New Testament, and not say St. Abraham, St. Moses, and St. Isaiah, as well as St. Matthew and St. Mark; and St. David the psalmist, as well as St. David the British bishop. Aaron is expressly called the saint of the Lord. (2.) All that are themselves saints will turn to those that are so, will choose them for their friends and converse with them, will choose them for their judges and consult them. See Psa 119:79. The saints shall judge the world, Co1 6:1, Co1 6:2. Walk in the way of good men (Pro 2:20), the old way, the footsteps of the flock. Every one chooses some sort of people or other to whom he studies to recommend himself, and whose sentiments are to him the test of honour and dishonour. Now all true saints endeavour to recommend themselves to those that are such, and to stand right in their opinion. (3.) There are some truths so plain, and so universally known and believed, that one may venture to appeal to any of the saints concerning them. However there are some things about which they unhappily differ, there are many more, and more considerable, in which they are agreed; as the evil of sin, the vanity of the world, the worth of the soul, the necessity of a holy life, and the like. Though they do not all live up, as they should, to their belief of these truths, yet they are all ready to bear their testimony to them.
Now there are two things which Eliphaz here maintains, and in which he doubts not but all the saints concur with him: -
I. That the sin of sinners directly tends to their own ruin (Job 5:2): Wrath kills the foolish man, his own wrath, and therefore he is foolish for indulging it; it is a fire in his bones, in his blood, enough to put him into a fever. Envy is the rottenness of the bones, and so slays the silly one that frets himself with it. &quot;So it is with thee,&quot; says Eliphaz, &quot;while thou quarrellest with God thou doest thyself the greatest mischief; thy anger at thy own troubles, and thy envy at our prosperity, do but add to thy pain and misery: turn to the saints, and thou wilt find they understand their interest better.&quot; Job had told his wife she spoke as the foolish women; now Eliphaz tells him he acted as the foolish men, the silly ones. Or it may be meant thus: &quot;If men are ruined and undone, it is always their own folly that ruins and undoes them. They kill themselves by some lust or other; therefore, no doubt, Job, thou hast done some foolish thing, by which thou hast brought thyself into this calamitous condition.&quot; Many understand it of God&#039;s wrath and jealousy. Job needed not be uneasy at the prosperity of the wicked, for the world&#039;s smiles can never shelter them from God&#039;s frowns; they are foolish and silly if they think they will. God&#039;s anger will be the death, the eternal death, of those on whom it fastens. What is hell but God&#039;s anger without mixture or period?
II. That their prosperity is short and their destruction certain, Job 5:3-5. He seems here to parallel Job&#039;s case with that which is commonly the case of wicked people. 1. Job had prospered for a time, seemed confirmed, and was secure in his prosperity; and it is common for foolish wicked men to do so: I have seen them taking root - planted, and, in their own and others&#039; apprehension, fixed, and likely to continue. See Jer 12:2; Psa 37:35, Psa 37:36. We see worldly men taking root in the earth; on earthly things they fix the standing of their hopes, and from them they draw the sap of their comforts. The outward estate may be flourishing, but the soul cannot prosper that takes root in the earth. 2. Job&#039;s prosperity was now at an end, and so has the prosperity of other wicked people quickly been. (1.) Eliphaz foresaw their ruin with an eye of faith. Those who looked only at present things blessed their habitation, and thought them happy, blessed it long, and wished themselves in their condition. But Eliphaz cursed it, suddenly cursed it, as soon as he saw them begin to take root, that is, he plainly foresaw and foretold their ruin; not that he prayed for it (I have not desired the woeful day), but he prognosticated it. He went into the sanctuary, and there understood their end and heard their doom read (Psa 73:17, Psa 73:18), that the prosperity of fools will destroy them, Pro 1:32. Those who believe the word of God can see a curse in the house of the wicked (Pro 3:33), though it be ever so finely and firmly built, and ever so full of all good things; and they can foresee that the curse will, in time, infallibly consume it with the timber thereof, and the stones thereof, Zac 5:4. (2.) He saw, at length, what he had foreseen. He was not disappointed in his expectation concerning him; the event answered it; his family was undone, and his estate ruined. In these particulars he plainly and very invidiously reflects on Job&#039;s calamities. [1.] His children were crushed, Job 5:4. They thought themselves safe in their eldest brother&#039;s house, but were far from safety, for they were crushed in the gate. Perhaps the door or gate of the house was highest built, and fell heaviest upon them, and there was none to deliver them from perishing in the ruins. This is commonly understood of the destruction of the families of wicked men, by the execution of justice upon them, to oblige them to restore what they have ill-gotten. They leave it to their children; but the descent shall not bar the entry of the rightful owners, who will crush their children, and cast them by due course of law (and there shall be none to help them), or perhaps by oppression, Psa 109:9, etc. [2.] His estate was plundered, Job 5:5. Job&#039;s was so. The hungry robbers, the Sabeans and Chaldeans, ran away with it, and swallowed it; and this, says he, I have often observed in others. What has been got by spoil and rapine has been lost in the same way. The careful owner hedged it about with thorns, and then thought it safe; but the fence proved insignificant against the greediness of the spoilers (if hunger will break through the stone walls, much more through thorn hedges), and against the divine curse, which will go through the thorns and briers, and burn them together, Isa 27:4.</p>

<p>the troops--that is, &quot;caravans.&quot;

Tema--north of Arabia-Deserta, near the Syrian desert; called from Tema son of Ishmael (Gen 25:15; Isa 21:14; Jer 25:23), still so called by the Arabs. Job 6:19-20 give another picture of the mortification of disappointed hopes, namely, those of the caravans on the direct road, anxiously awaiting the return of their companions from the distant valley. The mention of the locality whence the caravans came gives living reality to the picture.

Sheba--refers here not to the marauders in North Arabia-Deserta (Job 1:15), but to the merchants (Eze 27:22) in the south, in Arabia-Felix or Yemen, &quot;afar off&quot; (Jer 6:20; Mat 12:42; Gen 10:28). Caravans are first mentioned in Gen 37:25; men needed to travel thus in companies across the desert, for defense against the roving robbers and for mutual accommodation.

The companies . . . waited for them--cannot refer to the caravans who had gone in quest of the waters; for Job 6:18 describes their utter destruction.</p>

<p>Job&#039;s friends all of them went upon this principle, that wicked people cannot prosper long in this world, but some remarkable judgment or other will suddenly light on them: Zophar had concluded with it, that the eyes of the wicked shall fail, Job 11:20. This principle Job here opposes, and maintains that God, in disposing men&#039;s outward affairs, acts as a sovereign, reserving the exact distribution of rewards and punishments for the future state.
I. He asserts it as an undoubted truth that wicked people may, and often do, prosper long in this world, Job 12:6. Even great sinners may enjoy great prosperity. Observe, 1. How he describes the sinners. They are robbers, and such as provoke God, the worst kind of sinners, blasphemers and persecutors. Perhaps he refers to the Sabeans and Chaldeans, who had robbed him, and had always lived by spoil and rapine, and yet they prospered; all the world saw they did, and there is no disputing against sense; one observation built upon matter of fact is worth twenty notions framed by an hypothesis. Or more generally, All proud oppressors are robbers and pirates. It is supposed that what is injurious to men is provoking to God, the patron of right and the protector of mankind. It is not strange if those that violate the bonds of justice break through the obligations of all religion, bid defiance even to God himself, and make nothing of provoking him. 2. How he describes their prosperity. It is very great; for, (1.) Even their tabernacles prosper, those that live with them and those that come after them and descend from them. It seems as if a blessing were entailed upon their families; and that is sometimes preserved to succeeding generations which was got by fraud. (2.) They are secure, and not only feel no hurt, but fear none, are under no apprehensions of danger either from threatening providences or an awakened conscience. But those that provoke God are never the more safe for their being secure. (3.) Into their hand God brings abundantly. They have more than heart could wish (Psa 73:7), not for necessity only, but for delight - not for themselves only, but for others - not for the present only, but for hereafter; and this from the hand of Providence too. God brings plentifully to them. We cannot therefore judge of men&#039;s piety by their plenty, nor of what they have in their heart by what they have in their hand.
II. He appeals even to the inferior creatures for the proof of this - the beasts, and fowls, and trees, and even the earth itself; consult these, and they shall tell thee, Job 12:7, Job 12:8. Many a good lesson we may learn from them, but what are they here to teach us?
1. We may from them learn that the tabernacles of robbers prosper (so some); for, (1.) Even among the brute creatures the greater devour the less and the stronger prey upon the weaker, and men are as the fishes of the sea, Hab 1:14. If sin had not entered, we may suppose there would have been no such disorder among the creatures, but the wolf and the lamb would have lain down together. (2.) These creatures are serviceable to wicked men, and so they declare their prosperity. Ask the herds and the flocks to whom they belong, and they will tell you that such a robber, such an oppressor, is their owner: the fishes and fowls will tell you that they are served up to the tables, and feed the luxury, of proud sinners. The earth brings forth her fruits to them (Job 9:24), and the whole creation groans under the burden of their tyranny, Rom 8:20, Rom 8:22. Note, All the creatures which wicked men abuse, by making them the food and fuel of their lusts, will witness against them another day, Jam 5:3, Jam 5:4.
2. We may from them learn the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, and that sovereign dominion of his into which plain and self-evident truth all these difficult dispensations must be resolved. Zophar had made a vast mystery of it, Job 11:7. &quot;So far from that,&quot; says Job, &quot;that what we are concerned to know we may learn even from the inferior creatures; for who knows not from all these? Job 12:9. Any one may easily gather from the book of the creatures that the hand of the Lord has wrought this,&quot; that is, &quot;that there is a wise Providence which guides and governs all these things by rules which we are neither acquainted with nor are competent judges of.&quot; Note, From God&#039;s sovereign dominion over the inferior creatures we should learn to acquiesce in all his disposals of the affairs of the children of men, though contrary to our measures.
III. He resolves all into the absolute propriety which God has in all the creatures (Job 12:10): In whose hand is the soul of every living thing. All the creatures, and mankind particularly, derive their being from him, owe their being to him, depend upon him for the support of it, lie at his mercy, are under his direction and dominion and entirely at his disposal, and at his summons must resign their lives. All souls are his; and may he not do what he will with his own? The name Jehovah is used here (Job 12:9), and it is the only time that we meet with it in all the discourses between Job and his friends; for God was, in that age, more known by the name of Shaddai - the Almighty.
IV. Those words - (Job 12:11), Doth not the ear try words, as the mouth tastes meat? may be taken either as the conclusion to the foregoing discourse or the preface to what follows. The mind of man has as good a faculty of discerning between truth and error, when duly stated, as the palate has of discerning between what is sweet and what is bitter. Job therefore demands from his friends a liberty to judge for himself of what they had said, and desires them to use the same liberty in judging of what he had said; nay, he seems to appeal to any man&#039;s impartial judgment in this controversy; let the ear try the words on both sides, and it would be found that he was in the right. Note, The ear must try words before it receives them so as to subscribe to them. As by the taste we judge what food is wholesome to the body and what not, so by the spirit of discerning we must judge what doctrine is sound, and savoury, and wholesome, and what not, Co1 10:15; Co1 11:13.</p>

<p>Eliphaz here falls very foul upon Job, because he contradicted what he and his colleagues had said, and did not acquiesce in it and applaud it, as they expected. Proud people are apt thus to take it very much amiss if they may not have leave to dictate and give law to all about them, and to censure those as ignorant and obstinate, and all that is naught, who cannot in every thing say as they say. Several great crimes Eliphaz here charges Job with, only because he would not own himself a hypocrite.
I. He charges him with folly and absurdity (Job 15:2, Job 15:3), that, whereas he had been reputed a wise man, he had now quite forfeited his reputation; any one would say that his wisdom had departed from him, he talked so extravagantly and so little to the purpose. Bildad began thus (Job 8:2), and Zophar, Job 11:2, Job 11:3. It is common for angry disputants thus to represent one another&#039;s reasonings as impertinent and ridiculous more than there is cause, forgetting the doom of him that calls his brother Raca, and Thou fool. It is true, 1. That there is in the world a great deal of vain knowledge, science falsely so called, that is useless, and therefore worthless. 2. That this is the knowledge that puffs up, with which men swell in a fond conceit of their own accomplishments. 3. That, whatever vain knowledge a man may have in his head, if he would be thought a wise man he must not utter it, but let it die with himself as it deserves. 4. Unprofitable talk is evil talk. We must give an account in the great day not only for wicked words, but for idle words. Speeches therefore which do no good, which do no service either to God or our neighbour, or no justice to ourselves, which are no way to the use of edifying, were better unspoken. Those words which are as wind, light and empty, especially which are as the east wind, hurtful and pernicious, it will be pernicious to fill either ourselves or others with, for they will pass very ill in the account. 5. Vain knowledge or unprofitable talk ought to be reproved and checked, especially in a wise man, whom it worst becomes and who does most hurt by the bad example of it.
II. He charges him with impiety and irreligion (Job 15:4): &quot;Thou castest off fear,&quot; that is, &quot;the fear of God, and that regard to him which thou shouldst have; and then thou restrainest prayer.&quot; See what religion is summed up in, fearing God and praying to him, the former the most needful principle, the latter the most needful practice. Where no fear of God is no good is to be expected; and those who live without prayer certainly live without God in the world. Those who restrain prayer do thereby give evidence that they cast off fear. Surely those have no reverence of God&#039;s majesty, no dread of his wrath, and are in no care about their souls and eternity, who make no applications to God for his grace. Those who are prayerless are fearless and graceless. When the fear of God is cast off all sin is let in and a door opened to all manner of profaneness. It is especially bad with those who have had some fear of God, but have now cast it off - have been frequent in prayer, but now restrain it. How have they fallen! How is their first love lost! It denotes a kind of force put upon themselves. The fear of God would cleave to them, but they throw it off; prayer would be uttered, but they restrain it; and, in both, they baffle their convictions. Those who either omit prayer or straiten and abridge themselves in it, quenching the spirit of adoption and denying themselves the liberty they might take in the duty, restrain prayer. This is bad enough, but it is worse to restrain others from prayer, to prohibit and discourage prayer, as Darius, Dan 6:7. Now,
1. Eliphaz charges this upon Job, either, (1.) As that which was his own practice. He thought that Job talked of God with such liberty as if he had been his equal, and that he charged him so vehemently with hard usage of him, and challenged him so often to a fair trial, that he had quite thrown off all religious regard to him. This charge was utterly false, and yet wanted not some colour. We ought not only to take care that we keep up prayer and the fear of God, but that we never drop any unwary expressions which may give occasion to those who seek occasion to question our sincerity and constancy in religion. Or, (2.) As that which others would infer from the doctrine he maintained. &quot;If this be true&quot; (thinks Eliphaz) &quot;which Job says, that a man may be thus sorely afflicted and yet be a good man, then farewell all religion, farewell prayer and the fear of God. If all things come alike to all, and the best men may have the worst treatment in this world, every one will be ready to say, It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it to keep his ordinances? Mal 3:14. Verily I have cleansed my hands in vain, Psa 73:13, Psa 73:14. Who will be honest if the tabernacles of robbers prosper? Job 12:6. If there be no forgiveness with God (Job 7:21), who will fear him? Psa 130:4. If he laugh at the trial of the innocent (Job 9:23), if he be so difficult of access (Job 9:32), who will pray to him?&quot; Note, It is a piece of injustice which even wise and good men are too often guilty of, in the heat of disputation, to charge upon their adversaries those consequences of their opinions which are not fairly drawn from them and which really they abhor. This is not doing as we would be done by.
2. Upon this strained innuendo Eliphaz grounds that high charge of impiety (Job 15:5): Thy mouth utters thy iniquity - teaches it, so the word is. &quot;Thou teachest others to have the same hard thoughts of God and religion that thou thyself hast.&quot; It is bad to break even the least of the commandments, but worse to teach men so, Mat 5:19. If we ever thought evil, let us lay our hand upon our mouth to suppress the evil thought (Pro 30:32), and let us by no means utter it; that is putting an imprimatur to it, publishing it with allowance, to the dishonour of God and the damage of others. Observe, When men have cast off fear and prayer their mouths utter iniquity. Those that cease to do good soon learn to do evil. What can we expect but all manner of iniquity from those that arm not themselves with the grace of God against it? But thou choosest the tongue of the crafty, that is, &quot;Thou utterest thy iniquity with some show and pretence of piety, mixing some good words with the bad, as tradesmen do with their wares to help them off.&quot; The mouth of iniquity could not do so much mischief as it does without the tongue of the crafty. The serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety. See Rom 16:18. The tongue of the crafty speaks with design and deliberation; and therefore those that use it may be said to choose it, as that which will serve their purpose better than the tongue of the upright: but it will be found, at last, that honesty is the best policy. Eliphaz, in his first discourse, had proceeded against Job upon mere surmise (Job 4:6, Job 4:7), but now he has got proof against him from his own discourses (Job 15:6): Thy own mouth condemns thee, and not I. But he should have considered that he and his fellows had provoked him to say that which now they took advantage of; and that was not fair. Those are most effectually condemned that are condemned by themselves, Tit 3:11; Luk 19:22. Many a man needs no more to sink him than for his own tongue to fall upon him.
III. He charges him with intolerable arrogancy and self-conceitedness. It was a just, and reasonable, and modest demand that Job had made (Job 12:3), Allow that I have understanding as well as you; but see how they seek occasion against him: that is misconstrued, as if he pretended to be wiser than any man. Because he will not grant to them the monopoly of wisdom, they will have it thought that he claims it to himself, Job 15:7-9. As if he thought he had the advantage of all mankind, 1. In length of acquaintance with the world, which furnishes men with so much the more experience: &quot;Art thou the first man that was born; and, consequently, senior to us, and better able to give the sense of antiquity and the judgment of the first and earliest, the wisest and purest, ages? Art thou prior to Adam?&quot; So it may be read. &quot;Did not he suffer for sin; and yet wilt not thou, who art so great a sufferer, own thyself a sinner? Wast thou made before the hills, as Wisdom herself was? Pro 8:23, etc. Must God&#039;s counsels, which are as the great mountains (Psa 36:6), and immovable as the everlasting hills, be subject to thy notions and bow to them? Dost thou know more of the world than any of us do? No, thou art but of yesterday even as we are,&quot; Job 8:9. Or, 2. In intimacy of acquaintance with God (Job 15:8): &quot;Hast thou heard the secret of God? Dost thou pretend to be of the cabinet-council of heaven, that thou canst give better reasons than others can for God&#039;s proceedings?&quot; There are secret things of God, which belong not to us, and which therefore we must not pretend to account for. Those are daringly presumptuous who do. He also represents him, (1.) As assuming to himself such knowledge as none else had: &quot;Dost thou restrain wisdom to thyself, as if none were wise besides?&quot; Job had said (Job 13:2), What you know, the same do I know also; and now they return upon him, according to the usage of eager disputants, who think they have a privilege to commend themselves: What knowest thou that we know not? How natural are such replies as these in the heat of argument! But how simple do they look afterwards, upon the review! (2.) As opposing the stream of antiquity, a venerable name, under the shade of which all contending parties strive to shelter themselves: &quot;With us are the gray-headed and very aged men, Job 15:10. We have the fathers on our side; all the ancient doctors of the church are of our opinion.&quot; A thing soon said, but not so soon proved; and, when proved, truth is not so soon discovered and proved by it as most people imagine. David preferred right scripture-knowledge before that of antiquity (Psa 119:100): I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts. Or perhaps one or more, if not all three, of these friends of Job, were older than he (Job 32:6), and therefore they thought he was bound to acknowledge them to be in the right. This also serves contenders to make a noise with to very little purpose. If they are older than their adversaries, and can say they knew such a thing before their opponents were born, this will not serve to justify them in being arrogant and overbearing; for the oldest are not always the wisest, Job 32:9.
IV. He charges him with a contempt of the counsels and comforts that were given him by his friends (Job 15:11): Are the consolations of God small with thee? 1. Eliphaz takes it ill that Job did not value the comforts which he and his friends administered to him more than it seems he did, and did not welcome every word they said as true and important. It is true they had said some very good things, but, in their application to Job, they were miserable comforters. Note, We are apt to think that great and considerable which we ourselves say, when others perhaps with good reason think it small and trifling. Paul found that those who seemed to be somewhat, yet, in conference, added nothing to him, Gal 2:6. 2. He represents this as a slight put upon divine consolations in general, as if they were of small account with him, whereas really they were not. If he had not highly valued them, he could not have borne up as he did under his sufferings. Note, (1.) The consolations of God are not in themselves small. Divine comforts are great things, that is, the comfort which is from God, especially the comfort which is in God. (2.) The consolations of God not being small in themselves, it is very lamentable if they be small with us. It is a great affront to God, and an evidence of a degenerate depraved mind, to disesteem and undervalue spiritual delights and despise the pleasant land. &quot;What!&quot; (says Eliphaz) &quot;is there any secret thing with thee? Hast thou some cordial to support thyself with, that is a proprium, an arcanum, that nobody else can pretend to, or knows any thing of?&quot; Or, &quot;Is there some secret sin harboured and indulged in thy bosom, which hinders the operation of divine comforts?&quot; None disesteem divine comforts but those that secretly affect the world and the flesh.
V. He charges him with opposition to God himself and to religion (Job 15:12, Job 15:13): &quot;Why doth thy heart carry thee away into such indecent irreligious expressions?&quot; Note, Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, Jam 1:14. if we fly off from God and our duty, or fly out into anything amiss, it is our own heart that carries us away. If thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it. There is a violence, an ungovernable impetus, in the turnings of the soul; the corrupt heart carries men away, as it were, by force, against their convictions. &quot;What is it that thy eyes wink at? Why so careless and mindless of what is said to thee, hearing it as if thou wert half asleep? Why so scornful, disdaining what we say, as if it were below thee to take notice of it? What have we said that deserves to be thus slighted - nay, that thou turnest thy spirit against God?&quot; It was bad that his heart was carried away from God, but much worse that it was turned against God. But those that forsake God will soon break out in open enmity to him. But how did this appear? Why, &quot;Thou lettest such words go out of thy mouth, reflecting on God, and his justice and goodness.&quot; It is the character of the wicked that they set their mouth against the heavens (Psa 73:9), which is a certain indication that the spirit is turned against God. He thought Job&#039;s spirit was soured against God, and so turned from what it had been, and exasperated at his dealings with him. Eliphaz wanted candour and charity, else he would not have put such a harsh construction upon the speeches of one that had such a settled reputation for piety and was now in temptation. This was, in effect, to give the cause on Satan&#039;s side, and to own that Job had done as Satan said he would, had cursed God to his face.
VI. He charges him with justifying himself to such a degree as even to deny his share in the common corruption and pollution of the human nature (Job 15:14): What is man, that he should be clean? that is, that he should pretend to be so, or that any should expect to find him so. What is he that is born of a woman, a sinful woman, that he should be righteous? Note, 1. Righteousness is cleanness; it makes us acceptable to God and easy to ourselves, Psa 18:24. 2. Man, in his fallen state, cannot pretend to be clean and righteous before God, either to acquit himself to God&#039;s justice or recommend himself to his favour. 3. He is to be adjudged unclean and unrighteous because born of a woman, from whom he derives a corrupt nature, which is both his guilt and his pollution. With these plain truths Eliphaz thinks to convince Job, whereas he had just now said the same (Job 14:4): Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? But does it therefore follow that Job is a hypocrite, and a wicked man, which is all that he denied? By no means. Though man, as born of a woman, is not clean, yet, as born again of the Spirit, he is clean. 4. Further to evince this he here shows, (1.) That the brightest creatures are imperfect and impure before God, Job 15:15. God places no confidence in saints and angels; he employs both, but trusts neither with his service, without giving them fresh supplies of strength and wisdom for it, as knowing they are not sufficient of themselves, neither more nor better than his grace makes them. He takes no complacency in the heavens themselves. How pure soever they seem to us, in his eye they have many a speck and many a flaw: The heavens are not clean in his sight. If the stars (says Mr. Caryl) have no light in the sight of the sun, what light has the sun in the sight of God! See Isa 24:23. (2.) That man is much more so (Job 15:16): How much more abominable and filthy is man! If saints are not to be trusted, much less sinners. If the heavens are not pure, which are as God made them, much less man, who is degenerated. Nay, he is abominable and filthy in the sight of God, and if ever he repent he is so in his own sight, and therefore he abhors himself. Sin is an odious thing, it makes men hateful. The body of sin is so, and is therefore called a dead body, a loathsome thing. Is it not a filthy thing, and enough to make any one sick, to see a man eating swine&#039;s food or drinking some nauseous and offensive stuff? Such is the filthiness of man that he drinks iniquity (that abominable thing which the Lord hates) as greedily, and with as much pleasure, as a man drinks water when he is thirsty. It is his constant drink; it is natural to sinners to commit iniquity. It gratifies, but does not satisfy, the appetites of the old man. It is like water to a man in a dropsy. The more men sin the more they would sin.</p>

<p>The class of wicked here described is that of robbers who plunder &quot;cities,&quot; and seize on the houses of the banished citizens (Isa 13:20). Eliphaz chooses this class because Job had chosen the same (Job 12:6).

heaps--of ruins.</p>

<p>Job&#039;s friends had been very positive in it that they should soon see the fall of wicked people, how much soever they might prosper for a while. By no means, says Job; though times are not hidden from the Almighty, yet those that know him do not presently see his day, Job 24:1. 1. He takes it for granted that times are not hidden from the Almighty; past times are not hidden from his judgment (Ecc 3:15), present times are not hidden from his providence (Mat 10:29), future times are not hidden from his prescience, Act 15:18. God governs the world, and therefore we may be sure he takes cognizance of it. Bad times are not hidden from him, though the bad men that make the times bad say one to another, He has forsaken the earth, Psa 94:6, Psa 94:7. Every man&#039;s times are in his hand, and under his eye, and therefore it is in his power to make the times of wicked men in this world miserable. He foresees the time of every man&#039;s death, and therefore, if wicked men die before they are punished for their wickedness, we cannot say, &quot;They escaped him by surprise;&quot; he foresaw it, nay, he ordered it. Before Job will enquire into the reasons of the prosperity of wicked men he asserts God&#039;s omniscience, as one prophet, in a similar case, asserts his righteousness (Jer 12:1), another his holiness (Hab 1:13), another his goodness to his own people, Psa 73:1. General truths must be held fast, though we may find it difficult to reconcile them to particular events. 2. He yet asserts that those who know him (that is, wise and good people who are acquainted with him, and with whom his secret is) do not see his day, - the day of his judging for them; this was the thing he complained of in his own case (Job 23:8), that he could not see God appearing on his behalf to plead his cause, - the day of his judging against open and notorious sinners, that is called his day, Psa 37:13. We believe that day will come, but we do not see it, because it is future, and its presages are secret. 3. Though this is a mystery of Providence, yet there is a reason for it, and we shall shortly know why the judgment is deferred; even the wisest, and those who know God best, do not yet see it. God will exercise their faith and patience, and excite their prayers for the coming of his kingdom, for which they are to cry day and night to him, Luk 18:7.
For the proof of this, that wicked people prosper, Job specifies two sorts of unrighteous ones, whom all the world saw thriving in their iniquity: -
I. Tyrants, and those that do wrong under pretence of law and authority. It is a melancholy sight which has often been seen under the sun, wickedness in the place of judgment (Ecc 3:16), the unregarded tears of the oppressed, while on the side of the oppressors there was power (Ecc 4:1), the violent perverting of justice and judgment, Ecc 5:8. 1. They disseize their neighbours of their real estates, which came to them by descent from their ancestors. They remove the land-marks, under pretence that they were misplaced (Job 24:2), and so they encroach upon their neighbours&#039; rights and think they effectually secure that to their posterity which they have got wrongfully, by making that to be an evidence for them which should have been an evidence for the rightful owner. This was forbidden by the law of Moses (Deu 19:14), under a curse, Deu 27:17. Forging or destroying deeds is now a crime equivalent to this. 2. They dispossess them of their personal estates, under colour of justice. They violently take away flocks, pretending they are forfeited, and feed thereof; as the rich man took the poor man&#039;s ewe lamb, Sa2 12:4. If a poor fatherless child has but an ass of his own to get a little money with, they find some colour or other to take it away, because the owner is not able to contest with them. It is all one if a widow has but an ox for what little husbandry she has; under pretence of distraining for some small debt, or arrears of rent, this ox shall be taken for a pledge, though perhaps it is the widow&#039;s all. God has taken it among the titles of his honour to be a Father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows; and therefore those will not be reckoned his friends that do not to their utmost protect and help them; but those he will certainly reckon with as his enemies that vex and oppress them. 3. They take all occasions to offer personal abuses to them, Job 24:4. They will mislead them if they can when they meet them on the high-way, so that the poor and needy are forced to hide themselves from them, having no other way to secure themselves from them. They love in their hearts to banter people, and to make fools of them, and do them a mischief if they can, especially to triumph over poor people, whom they turn out of the way of getting relief, threaten to punish them as vagabonds, and so force them to abscond, and laugh at them when they have done. Some understand those barbarous actions (Job 24:9, Job 24:10) to be done by those oppressors that pretend law for what they do: They pluck the fatherless from the breast; that is, having made poor infants fatherless, they make them motherless too; having taken away the father&#039;s life, they break the mother&#039;s heart, and so starve the children and leave them to perish. Pharaoh and Herod plucked children from the breast to the sword; and we read of children brought forth to the murderers, Hos 9:13. Those are inhuman murderers indeed that can with so much pleasure suck innocent blood. They take a pledge of the poor, and so they rob the spital; nay, they take the poor themselves for a pledge (as some read it), and probably it was under this pretence that they plucked the fatherless from the breast, distraining them for slaves, as Neh 5:5. Cruelty to the poor is great wickedness and cries aloud for vengeance. Those who show no mercy to such as lie at their mercy shall themselves have judgment without mercy. Another instance of their barbarous treatment of those they have advantage against is that they take from them even their necessary food and raiment; they squeeze them so with their extortion that they cause them to go naked without clothing (Job 24:10) and so catch their death. And if a poor hungry family has gleaned a sheaf of corn, to make a little cake of, that they may eat it and die, even that they take away from them, being well pleased to see them perish for want, while they themselves are fed to the full. 4. They are very oppressive to the labourers they employ in their service. They not only give them no wages, though the labourer is worthy of his hire (and this is a crying sin, Jam 5:4), but they will not so much as give them meat and drink: Those that carry their sheaves are hungry; so some read it (Job 24:10), and it agrees with Job 24:11, that those who make oil within their walls, and with a great deal of toil labour at the wine-presses, yet suffer thirst, which was worse than muzzling the mouth of the ox that treads out the corn. Those masters forget that they have a Master in heaven who will not allow the necessary supports of life to their servants and labourers, not caring whether they can live by their labour or no. 5. It is not only among the poor country people, but in the cities also, that we see the tears of the oppressed (Job 24:12): Men groan from out of the city, where the rich merchants and traders are as cruel with their poor debtors as the landlords in the country are with their poor tenants. In cities such cruel actions as these are more observed than in obscure corners of the country and the wronged have easier access to justice to right themselves; and yet the oppressors there fear neither the restraints of the law nor the just censures of their neighbours, but the oppressed groan and cry out like wounded men, and can no more ease and help themselves, for the oppressors are inexorable and deaf to their groans.
II. He speaks of robbers, and those that do wrong by downright force, as the bands of the Sabeans and Chaldeans, which had lately plundered him. He does not mention them particularly, lest he should seem partial to his own cause, and to judge of men (as we are apt to do) by what they are to us; but among the Arabians, the children of the east (Job&#039;s country), there were those that lived by spoil and rapine, making incursions upon their neighbours, and robbing travellers. See how they are described here, and what mischief they do, Job 24:5-8. 1. Their character is that they are as wild asses in the desert, untamed, untractable, unreasonable, Ishmael&#039;s character (Gen 16:12), fierce and furious, and under no restraint of law or government, Jer 2:23, Jer 2:24. They choose the deserts for their dwelling, that they may be lawless and unsociable, and that they may have opportunity of doing the more mischief. The desert is indeed the fittest place for such wild people, Job 39:6. But no desert can set men out of the reach of God&#039;s eye and hand. 2. Their trade is to steal, and to make a prey of all about them. They have chosen it as their trade; it is their work, because there is more to be got by it, and it is got more easily, than by an honest calling. They follow it as their trade; they follow it closely; they go forth to it as their work, as man goes forth to his labour, Psa 104:23. They are diligent and take pains at it: They rise betimes for a prey. If a traveller be out early, they will be out as soon to rob him. They live by it as a man lives by his trade: The wilderness (not the grounds there but the roads there) yieldeth food for them and for their children; they maintain themselves and their families by robbing on the high-way, and bless themselves in it without any remorse of compassion or conscience, and with as much security as if it were honestly got; as Ephraim, Hos 12:7, Hos 12:8. 3. See the mischief they do to the country. They not only rob travellers, but they make incursions upon their neighbours, and reap every one his corn in the field (Job 24:6), that is, they enter upon other people&#039;s ground, cut their corn, and carry it away as freely as if it were their own. Even the wicked gather the vintage, and it is their wickedness; or, as we read it, They gather the vintage of the wicked, and so one wicked man is made a scourge to another. What the wicked got by extortion (which is their way of stealing) these robbers get from them in their way of stealing; thus oftentimes are the spoilers spoiled, Isa 33:1. 4. The misery of those that fall into their hands (Job 24:7, Job 24:8): They cause the naked, whom they have stripped, not leaving them the clothes to their backs, to lodge, in the cold nights, without clothing, so that they are wet with the showers of the mountains, and, for want of a better shelter, embrace the rock, and are glad of a cave or den in it to preserve them from the injuries of the weather. Eliphaz had charged Job with such inhumanity as this, concluding that Providence would not thus have stripped him if he had not first stripped the naked of their clothing, Job 22:6. Job here tells him there were those that were really guilty of those crimes with which he was unjustly charged and yet prospered and had success in their villanies, the curse they laid themselves under working invisibly; and Job thinks it more just to argue as he did, from an open notorious course of wickedness inferring a secret and future punishment, than to argue as Eliphaz did, who from nothing but present trouble inferred a course of past secret iniquity. The impunity of these oppressors and spoilers is expressed in one word (Job 24:12): Yet God layeth not folly to them, that is, he does not immediately prosecute them with his judgments for these crimes, nor make them examples, and so evince their folly to all the world. He that gets riches, and not by right, at his end shall be a fool, Jer 17:11. But while he prospers he passes for a wise man, and God lays not folly to him until he saith, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, Luk 12:20.</p>

<p>wild asses-- (Job 11:12). So Ishmael is called a &quot;wild ass-man&quot;; Hebrew (Gen 16:12). These Bedouin robbers, with the unbridled wildness of the ass of the desert, go forth thither. Robbery is their lawless &quot;work.&quot; The desert, which yields no food to other men, yields food for the robber and his children by the plunder of caravans.

rising betimes--In the East travelling is begun very early, before the heat comes on.</p>

<p>Like the wild asses (Job 24:5) they (these Bedouin robbers) reap (metaphorically) their various grain (so the Hebrew for &quot;corn&quot; means). The wild ass does not let man pile his mixed provender up in a stable (Isa 30:24); so these robbers find their food in the open air, at one time in the desert (Job 24:5), at another in the fields.

the vintage of the wicked--Hebrew, &quot;the wicked gather the vintage&quot;; the vintage of robbery, not of honest industry. If we translate &quot;belonging to the wicked,&quot; then it will imply that the wicked alone have vineyards, the &quot;pious poor&quot; (Job 24:4) have none. &quot;Gather&quot; in Hebrew, is &quot;gather late.&quot; As the first clause refers to the early harvest of corn, so the second to the vintage late in autumn.</p>

<p>UMBREIT understands it of the Bedouin robbers, who are quite regardless of the comforts of life, &quot;They pass the night naked, and uncovered,&quot; &amp;c. But the allusion to Job 22:6, makes the English Version preferable (see on Job 24:10). Frost is not uncommon at night in those regions (Gen 31:40).</p>

<p>with the light--at early dawn, while still dark, when the traveller in the East usually sets out, and the poor laborer to his work; the murderous robber lies in wait then (Psa 10:8).

is as a thief--Thieves in the East steal while men sleep at night; robbers murder at early dawn. The same man who steals at night, when light dawns not only robs, but murders to escape detection.</p>

<p>Job here, in the conclusion of his discourse,
I. Gives some further instances of the wickedness of these cruel bloody men. 1. Some are pirates and robbers at sea. To this many learned interpreters apply those difficult expressions (Job 24:18), He is swift upon the waters. Privateers choose those ships that are the best sailors. In these swift ships they cruise from one channel to another, to pick up prizes; and this brings them in so much wealth that their portion is cursed in the earth, and they behold not the way of the vineyards, that is (as bishop Patrick explains it), they despise the employment of those who till the ground and plant vineyards as poor and unprofitable. But others make this a further description of the conduct of those sinners that are afraid of the light: if they be discovered, they get away as fast as they can, and choose to lurk, not in the vineyards, for fear of being discovered, but in some cursed portion, a lonely and desolate place, which nobody looks after. 2. Some are abusive to those that are in trouble, and add affliction to the afflicted. Barrenness was looked upon as a great reproach, and those that fall under that affliction they upbraid with it, as Peninnah did Hannah, on purpose to vex them and make them to fret, which is a barbarous thing. This is evil entreating the barren that beareth not (Job 24:21), or those that are childless, and so want the arrows others have in their quiver, which enable them to deal with their enemy in the gate, Psa 127:5. They take that advantage against and are oppressive to them. As the fatherless, so the childless, are in some degree helpless. For the same reason it is a cruel thing to hurt the widow, to whom we ought to do good; and not doing good, when it is in our power, is doing hurt. 3. There are those who, by inuring themselves to cruelty, come at last to be so exceedingly boisterous that they are the terror of the mighty in the land of the living (Job 24:22): &quot;He draws the mighty into a snare with his power; even the greatest are not able to stand before him when he is in his mad fits: he rises up in his passion, and lays about him with so much fury that no man is sure of his life; nor can he at the same time be sure of his own, for his hand is against every man and every man&#039;s hand against him,&quot; Gen 16:12. One would wonder how any man can take pleasure in making all about him afraid of him, yet there are those that do.
II. He shows that these daring sinners prosper, and are at ease for a while, nay, and often end their days in peace, as Ishmael, who, though he was a man of such a character as is here given, yet both lived and died in the presence of all his brethren, as we are told, Gen 16:12; Gen 25:18 : Of these sinners here it is said, 1. That it is given them to be in safety, Job 24:23. They seem to be under the special protection of the divine Providence; and one would wonder how they escape with life through so many dangers as they run themselves into. 2. That they rest upon this, that is, they rely upon this as sufficient to warrant all their violences. Because sentence against their evil works is not executed speedily they think that there is no great evil in them, and that God is not displeased with them, nor will ever call them to an account. Their prosperity is their security. 3. That they are exalted for a while. They seem to be the favourites of heaven, and value themselves as making the best figure on earth. They are set up in honour, set up (as they think) out of the reach of danger, and lifted up in the pride of their own spirits. 4. That, at length, they are carried out of the world very silently and gently, and without any remarkable disgrace or terror. &quot;They go down to the grave as easily as snow-water sinks into the dry ground when it is melted by the sun;&quot; so bishop Patrick explains Job 24:19. To the same purport he paraphrases Job 24:20, The womb shall forget him, etc. &quot;God sets no such mark of his displeasure upon him but that his mother may soon forget him. The hand of justice does not hang him on a gibbet for the birds to feed on; but he is carried to his grave like other men, to be the sweet food of worms. There he lies quietly, and neither he nor his wickedness is any more remembered than a tree which is broken to shivers.&quot; And Job 24:24, They are taken out of the way as all others, that is, &quot;they are shut up in their graves like all other men; nay, they die as easily (without those tedious pains which some endure) as an ear of corn is cropped with your hand.&quot; Compare this with Solomon&#039;s observation (Ecc 8:10), I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten.
III. He foresees their fall however, and that their death, though they die in ease and honour, will be their ruin. God&#039;s eyes are upon their ways, Job 24:23. Though he keep silence, and seem to connive at them, yet he takes notice, and keeps account of all their wickedness, and will make it to appear shortly that their most secret sins, which they thought no eye should see (Job 24:15), were under his eye and will be called over again. Here is no mention of the punishment of these sinners in the other world, but it is intimated in the particular notice taken of the consequences of their death. 1. The consumption of the body in the grave, though common to all, yet to them is in the nature of a punishment for their sin. The grave shall consume those that have sinned; that land of darkness will be the lot of those that love darkness rather than light. The bodies they pampered shall be a feast for worms, which shall feed as sweetly on them as ever they fed on the pleasures and gains of their sins. 2. Though they thought to make themselves a great name by their wealth, and power, and mighty achievements, yet their memorial perished with them, Psa 9:6. He that made himself so much talked of shall, when he is dead, be no more remembered with honour; his name shall rot, Pro 10:7. Those that durst not give him his due character while he lived shall not spare him when he is dead; so that the womb that bore him, his own mother, shall forget him, that is, shall avoid making mention of him, and shall think that the greatest kindness she can do him, since no good can be said of him. That honour which is got by sin will soon turn into shame. 3. The wickedness they thought to establish in their families shall be broken as a tree; all their wicked projects shall be blasted, and all their wicked hopes dashed and buried with them. 4. Their pride shall be brought down and laid in the dust (Job 24:24); and, in mercy to the world, they shall be taken out of the way, and all their power and prosperity shall be cut off. You may seek them, and they shall not be found. Job owns that wicked people will be miserable at last, miserable on the other side death, but utterly denies what his friends asserted, that ordinarily they are miserable in this life.
IV. He concludes with a bold challenge to all that were present to disprove what he had said if they could (Job 24:25): &quot;If it be not so now, as I have declared, and if it do not thence follow that I am unjustly condemned and censured, let those that can undertake to prove that my discourse is either, 1. False in itself, and then they prove me a liar; or, 2. Foreign, and nothing to the purpose, and then they prove my speech frivolous and nothing worth.&quot; That indeed which is false is nothing worth; where there is not truth, how can there be goodness? But those that speak the words of truth and soberness need not fear having what they say brought to the test, but can cheerfully submit it to a fair examination, as Job does here.</p>

<p>David, in these verses, discovers,
I. A very great affection to God and his favour; for, in the time of trouble, that which he complains of most feelingly is God&#039;s withdrawing his gracious presence (Psa 10:1): &quot;Why standest thou afar off, as one unconcerned in the indignities done to thy name and the injuries done to the people?&quot; Note, God&#039;s withdrawings are very grievous to his people at any time, but especially in times of trouble. Outward deliverance is afar off and is hidden from us, and then we think God is afar off and we therefore want inward comfort; but that is our own fault; it is because we judge by outward appearance; we stand afar off from God by our unbelief, and then we complain that God stands afar off from us.
II. A very great indignation against sin, the sins that made the times perilous, Ti2 3:1. he beholds the transgressors and is grieved, is amazed, and brings to his heavenly Father their evil report, not in a way of vain-glory, boasting before God that he was not as these publicans (Luk 18:11), much less venting any personal resentments, piques, or passions, of his own; but as one that laid to he art that which is offensive to God and all good men, and earnestly desired a reformation of manners. passionate and satirical invectives against bad men do more hurt than good; if we will speak of their badness, let it be to God in prayer, for he alone can make them better. This long representation of the wickedness of the wicked is here summed up in the first words of it (Psa 10:2), The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor, where two things are laid to their charge, pride and persecution, the former the cause of the latter. Proud men will have all about them to be of their mind, of their religion, to say as they say, to submit to their dominion, and acquiesce in their dictates; and those that either eclipse them or will not yield to them they malign and hate with an inveterate hatred. Tyranny, both in state and church, owes its origin to pride. The psalmist, having begun this description, presently inserts a short prayer, a prayer in a parenthesis, which is an advantage and no prejudice to the sense: Let them be taken, as proud people often are, in the devices that they have imagined, Psa 10:2. Let their counsels be turned headlong, and let them fall headlong by them. These two heads of the charge are here enlarged upon.
1. They are proud, very proud, and extremely conceited of themselves; justly therefore did he wonder that God did not speedily appear against them, for he hates pride, and resists the proud. (1.) The sinner proudly glories in his power and success. He boasts of his heart&#039;s desire, boasts that he can do what he pleases (as if God himself could not control him) and that he has all he wished for and has carried his point. Ephraim said, I have become rich, I have found me out substance, Hos 12:8. &quot;Now, Lord, is it for thy glory to suffer a sinful man thus to pretend to the sovereignty and felicity of a God?&quot; (2.) He proudly contradicts the judgment of God, which, we are sure, is according to truth; for he blesses the covetous, whom the Lord abhors. See how God and men differ in their sentiments of persons: God abhors covetous worldlings, who make money their God and idolize is; he looks upon them as his enemies, and will have no communion with them. The friendship of the world is enmity to God. But proud persecutors bless them, and approve their sayings, Psa 49:13. They applaud those as wise whom God pronounces foolish (Luk 12:20); they justify those as innocent whom God condemns as deeply guilty before him; and they admire those as happy, in having their portion in this life, whom God declares, upon that account, truly miserable. Thou, in thy lifetime, receivedst thy good things. (3.) He proudly casts off the thoughts of God, and all dependence upon him and devotion to him (Psa 10:4): The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, that pride of his heart which appears in his very countenance (Pro 6:17), will not seek after God, nor entertain the thoughts of him. God is not in all his thoughts, not in any of them. All his thoughts are that there is not God. See here, [1.] The nature of impiety and irreligion; it is not seeking after God and not having him in our thoughts. There is no enquiry made after him (Job 35:10, Jer 2:6), no desire towards him, no communion with him, but a secret wish to have no dependence upon him and not to be beholden to him. Wicked people will not seek after God (that is, will not call upon him); they live without prayer, and that is living without God. They have many thoughts, many projects and devices, but no eye to God in any of them, no submission to his will nor aim at his glory. [2.] The cause of this impiety and irreligion; and that is pride. Men will not seek after God because they think they have no need of him, their own hands are sufficient for them; they think it a thing below them to be religious, because religious people are few, and mean, and despised, and the restraints of religion will be a disparagement to them. (4.) He proudly makes light of God&#039;s commandments and judgments (Psa 10:5): His wings are always grievous; he is very daring and resolute in his sinful courses; he will have his way, though ever so tiresome to himself and vexatious to others; he travails with pain in his wicked courses, and yet his pride makes him wilful and obstinate in them. God&#039;s judgments (what he commands and what he threatens for the breach of his commands) are far above out of his sight; he is not sensible of his duty by the law of God nor of his danger by the wrath and curse of God. Tell him of God&#039;s authority over him, he turns it off with this, that he never saw God and therefore does not know that there is a God, he is in the height of heaven, and quae supra nos nihil ad nos - we have nothing to do with things above us. Tell him of God&#039;s judgments which will be executed upon those that go on still in their trespasses, and he will not be convinced that there is any reality in them; they are far above out of his sight, and therefore he thinks they are mere bugbears. (5.) He proudly despises all his enemies, and looks upon them with the utmost disdain; he puffs at those whom God is preparing to be a scourge and ruin to him, as if he could baffle them all, and was able to make his part good with them. But, as it is impolitic to despise an enemy, so it is impious to despise any instrument of God&#039;s wrath. (6.) He proudly sets trouble at defiance and is confident of the continuance of his own prosperity (Psa 10:6): He hath said in his heart, and pleased himself with the thought, I shall not be moved, my goods are laid up for many years, and I shall never be in adversity; like Babylon, that said, I shall be a lady for ever, Isa 47:7; Rev 18:7. Those are nearest ruin who thus set it furthest from them.
2. They are persecutors, cruel persecutors. For the gratifying of their pride and covetousness, and in opposition to God and religion, they are very oppressive to all within their reach. Observe, concerning these persecutors, (1.) That they are very bitter and malicious (Psa 10:7): His mouth is full of cursing. Those he cannot do a real mischief to, yet he will spit his venom at, and breathe out the slaughter which he cannot execute. Thus have God&#039;s faithful worshippers been anathematized and cursed, with bell, book, and candle. Where there is a heart full of malice there is commonly a mouth full of curses. (2.) They are very false and treacherous. There is mischief designed, but it is hidden under the tongue, not to be discerned, for his mouth is full of deceit and vanity. He has learned of the devil to deceive, and so to destroy; with this his hatred is covered, Pro 26:26. He cares not what lies he tells, not what oaths he breaks, nor what arts of dissimulation he uses, to compass his ends. (3.) That they are very cunning and crafty in carrying on their designs. They have ways and means to concert what they intend, that they may the more effectually accomplish it. Like Esau, that cunning hunter, he sits in the lurking places, in the secret places, and his eyes are privily set to do mischief (Psa 10:8), not because he is ashamed of what he does (if he blushed, there were some hopes he would repent), not because he is afraid of the wrath of God, for he imagines God will never call him to an account (Psa 10:11), but because he is afraid lest the discovery of his designs should be the breaking of them. Perhaps it refers particularly to robbers and highwaymen, who lie in wait for honest travellers, to make a prey of them and what they have. (4.) That they are very cruel and barbarous. Their malice is against the innocent, who never provoked them - against the poor, who cannot resist them and over whom it will be no glory to triumph. Those are perfectly lost to all honesty and honour against whose mischievous designs neither innocence nor poverty will be any man&#039;s security. Those that have power ought to protect the innocent and provide for the poor; yet these will be the destroyers of those whose guardians they ought to be. And what do they aim at? It is to catch the poor, and draw them into their net, that is, get them into their power, not to strip them only, but to murder them. They hunt for the precious life. It is God&#039;s poor people that they are persecuting, against whom they bear a mortal hatred for his sake whose they are and whose image they bear, and therefore they lie in wait to murder them: He lies in wait as a lion that thirsts after blood, and feeds with pleasure upon the prey. The devil, whose agent he is, is compared to a roaring lion that seeks not what, but whom, he may devour. (5.) That they are base and hypocritical (Psa 10:10): He crouches and humbles himself, as beasts of prey do, that they may get their prey within their reach. This intimates that the sordid spirits of persecutors and oppressors will stoop to any thing, though ever so mean, for the compassing of their wicked designs; witness the scandalous practices of Saul when he hunted David. It intimates, likewise, that they cover their malicious designs with the pretence of meekness and humility, and kindness to those they design the greatest mischief to; they seem to humble themselves to take cognizance of the poor, and concern themselves in their concernments, when it is in order to make them fall, to make a prey of them. (6.) That they are very impious and atheistical, Psa 10:11. They could not thus break through all the laws of justice and goodness towards man if they had not first shaken off all sense of religion, and risen up in rebellion against the light of its most sacred and self-evident principles: He hath said in his heart, God has forgotten. When his own conscience rebuked him with the consequences of it, and asked how he would answer it to the righteous Judge of heaven and earth, he turned it off with this, God has forsaken the earth, Eze 8:12; Eze 9:9. This is a blasphemous reproach, [1.] Upon God&#039;s omniscience and providence, as if he could not, or did not, see what men do in this lower world. [2.] Upon his holiness and the rectitude of his nature, as if, though he did see, yet he did not dislike, but was willing to connive at, the most unnatural and inhuman villanies. [3.] Upon his justice and the equity of his government, as if, though he did see and dislike the wickedness of the wicked, yet he would never reckon with them, nor punish them for it, either because he could not or durst not, or because he was not inclined to do so. Let those that suffer by proud oppressors hope that God will, in due time, appear for them; for those that are abusive to them are abusive to God Almighty too.
In singing this psalm and praying it over, we should have our hearts much affected with a holy indignation at the wickedness of the oppressors, a tender compassion of the miseries of the oppressed, and a pious zeal for the glory and honour of God, with a firm belief that he will, in due time, give redress to the injured and reckon with the injurious.</p>

<p>In these verses we have,
I. A great truth laid down in general, That all those who live a life of communion with God are constantly safe under his protection, and may therefore preserve a holy serenity and security of mind at all times (Psa 91:1): He that dwells, that sits down, in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty; he that by faith chooses God for his guardian shall find all that in him which he needs or can desire. Note, 1. It is the character of a true believer that he dwells in the secret place of the Most High; he is at home in God, returns to God, and reposes in him as his rest; he acquaints himself with inward religion, and makes heart-work of the service of God, worships within the veil, and loves to be alone with God, to converse with him in solitude. 2. It is the privilege and comfort of those that do so that they abide under the shadow of the Almighty; he shelters them, and comes between them and every thing that would annoy them, whether storm or sunshine. They shall not only have an admittance, but a residence, under God&#039;s protection; he will be their rest and refuge for ever.
II. The psalmist&#039;s comfortable application of this to himself (Psa 91:2): I will say of the Lord, whatever others say of him, &quot;He is my refuge; I choose him as such, and confide in him. Others make idols their refuge, but I will say of Jehovah, the true and living God, He is my refuge: any other is a refuge of lies. He is a refuge that will not fail me; for he is my fortress and strong-hold.&quot; Idolaters called their idols Mahuzzim, their most strong-hold (Dan 11:39), but therein they deceived themselves; those only secure themselves that make the Lord their God, their fortress. There being no reason to question his sufficiency, fitly does it follow, In him will I trust. If Jehovah be our God, our refuge, and our fortress, what can we desire which we may not be sure to find in him? He is neither fickle nor false, neither weak nor mortal; he is God and not man, and therefore there is no danger of being disappointed in him. We know whom we have trusted.
III. The great encouragement he gives to others to do likewise, not only from his own experience of the comfort of it (for in that there might possibly be a fallacy), but from the truth of God&#039;s promise, in which there neither is nor can be any deceit (Psa 91:3, Psa 91:4, etc.): Surely he shall deliver thee. Those who have themselves found the comfort of making God their refuge cannot but desire that others may do so. Now here it is promised,
1. That believers shall be kept from those mischiefs which they are in imminent danger of, and which would be fatal to them (Psa 91:3), from the snare of the fowler, which is laid unseen and catches the unwary prey on a sudden, and from the noisome pestilence, which seizes men unawares and against which there is no guard. This promise protects, (1.) The natural life, and is often fulfilled in our preservation from those dangers which are very threatening and very near, while yet we ourselves are not apprehensive of them, any more than the bird is of the snare of the fowler. We owe it, more than we are sensible, to the care of the divine Providence that we have been kept from infectious diseases and out of the hands of the wicked and unreasonable. (2.) The spiritual life, which is protected by divine grace from the temptations of Satan, which are as the snares of the fowler, and from the contagion of sin, which is the noisome pestilence. He that has given grace to be the glory of the soul will create a defence upon all that glory.
2. That God himself will be their protector; those must needs be safe who have him for their keeper, and successful for whom he undertakes (Psa 91:4): He shall cover thee, shall keep thee secret (Psa 31:20), and so keep thee safe, Psa 27:5. God protects believers, (1.) With the greatest tenderness and affection, which is intimated in that, He shall cover thee with his feathers, under his wings, which alludes to the hen gathering her chickens under wings, Mat 23:37. By natural instinct she not only protects them, but calls them under that protection when she sees them in danger, not only keeps them safe, but cherishes them and keeps them warm. To this the great God is pleased to compare his care of his people, who are helpless as the chickens, and easily made a prey of, but are invited to trust under the shadow of the wings of the divine promise and providence, which is the periphrasis of a proselyte to the true religion, that he has come to trust under the wings of the God of Israel, Rut 2:12. (2.) With the greatest power and efficacy. Wings and feathers, though spread with the greatest tenderness, are yet weak, and easily broken through, and therefore it is added, His truth shall be thy shield and buckler, a strong defence. God is willing to guard his people as the hen is to guard the chickens, and as able as a man of war in armour.
3. That he will not only keep them from evil, but from the fear of evil, Psa 91:5, Psa 91:6. Here is, (1.) Great danger supposed; the mention of it is enough to frighten us; night and day we lie exposed, and those that are apt to be timorous will in neither period think themselves safe. When we are retired into our chambers, our beds, and have made all as safe as we can about us, yet there is terror by night, from thieves and robbers, winds and storms, besides those things that are the creatures of fancy and imagination, which are often most frightful of all. We read of fear in the night, Sol 3:8. There is also a pestilence that walketh in darkness, as that was which slew the first-born of the Egyptians, and the army of the Assyrians. No locks nor bars can shut out diseases, while we carry about with us in our bodies the seeds of them. But surely in the day-time, when we can look about us, we are not so much in danger; yes, there is an arrow that flieth by day too, and yet flies unseen; there is a destruction that wasteth at high-noon, when we are awake and have all our friends about us; even then we cannot secure ourselves, nor can they secure us. It was in the day-time that that pestilence wasted which was sent to chastise David for numbering the people, on occasion of which some think this psalm was penned. But, (2.) Here is great security promised to believers in the midst of this danger: &quot;Thou shalt not be afraid. God by his grace will keep thee from disquieting distrustful fear (that fear which hath torment) in the midst of the greatest dangers. Wisdom shall keep thee from being causelessly afraid, and faith shall keep thee from being inordinately afraid. Thou shalt not be afraid of the arrow, as knowing that though it may hit thee it cannot hurt thee; if it take away the natural life, yet it shall be so far from doing any prejudice to the spiritual life that it shall be its perfection.&quot; A believer needs not fear, and therefore should not fear, any arrow, because the point is off, the poison is out. O death! where is thy sting? It is also under divine direction, and will hit where God appoints and not otherwise. Every bullet has its commission. Whatever is done our heavenly Father&#039;s will is done; and we have no reason to be afraid of that.
4. That they shall be preserved in common calamities, in a distinguishing way (Psa 91:7): &quot;When death rides in triumph, and diseases rage, so that thousands and ten thousands fall, fall by sickness, or fall by the sword in battle, fall at thy side, at thy right hand, and the sight of their fall is enough to frighten thee, and if they fall by the pestilence their falling so near thee may be likely to infect thee, yet it shall not come nigh thee, the death shall not, the fear of death shall not.&quot; Those that preserve their purity in times of general corruption may trust God with their safety in times of general desolation. When multitudes die round about us, though thereby we must be awakened to prepare for our own death, yet we must not be afraid with any amazement, nor make ourselves subject to bondage, as many do all their life-time, through fear of death, Heb 2:15. The sprinkling of blood secured the first-born of Israel when thousands fell. Nay, it is promised to God&#039;s people that they shall have the satisfaction of seeing, not only God&#039;s promises fulfilled to them, but his threatenings fulfilled upon those that hate them (Psa 91:8): Only with thy eyes shalt thou behold and see the just reward of the wicked, which perhaps refers to the destruction of the first-born of Egypt by the pestilence, which was both the punishment of the oppressors and the enlargement of the oppressed; this Israel saw when they saw themselves unhurt, untouched. As it will aggravate the damnation of sinners that with their eyes they shall behold and see the reward of the righteous (Luk 13:28), so it will magnify the salvation of the saints that with their eyes they shall behold and see the destruction of the wicked, Isa 66:24; Psa 58:10.</p>