Resultados para: "Wormwood"

<p>We have here the progress of Cain&#039;s anger, and the issue of it in Abel&#039;s murder, which may be considered two ways: -
I. As Cain&#039;s sin; and a scarlet, crimson, sin it was, a sin of the first magnitude, a sin against the light and law of nature, and which the consciences even of bad men have startled at. See in it, 1. The sad effects of sin&#039;s entrance into the world and into the hearts of men. See what a root of bitterness the corrupt nature is, which bears this gall and wormwood. Adam&#039;s eating forbidden fruit seemed but a little sin, but it opened the door to the greatest. 2. A fruit of the enmity which is in the seed of the serpent against the seed of the woman. As Abel leads the van in the noble army of martyrs (Mat 23:35), so Cain stand in the front of the ignoble army of persecutors, Jde 1:11. So early did he that was after the flesh persecute him that was after the Spirit; and so it is now, more or less (Gal 4:29), and so it will be till the war shall end in the eternal salvation of all the saints and the eternal perdition of all that hate them. 3. See also what comes of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness; if they be indulged and cherished in the soul, they are in danger of involving men in the horrid guilt of murder itself. Rash anger is heart-murder, Mat 5:21, Mat 5:22. Much more is malice so; he that hates his brother is already a murderer before God; and, if God leave him to himself, he wants nothing but an opportunity to render him a murderer before the world. Many were the aggravations of Cain&#039;s sin. (1.) It was his brother, his own brother, that he murdered, his own mother&#039;s son (Psa 50:20), whom he ought to have loved, his younger brother, whom he ought to have protected. (2.) He was a good brother, one who had never done him any wrong, nor given him the least provocation in word or deed, but one whose desire had been always towards him, and who had been, in all instances, dutiful and respectful to him. (3.) He had fair warning given him, before, of this. God himself had told him what would come of it, yet he persisted in his barbarous design. (4.) It should seem that he covered it with a show of friendship and kindness: He talked with Abel his brother, freely and familiarly, lest Abel should suspect danger, and keep out of his reach. Thus Joab kissed Abner, and then killed him. Thus Absalom feasted his brother Amnon and then killed him. According to the Septuagint [a Greek version of the Old Testament, supposed to have been translated by seventy-two Jews, at the desire of Ptolemy Philadelphus, above 200 years before Christ], Cain said to Abel, Let us go into the field; if so, we are sure Abel did not understand it (according to the modern sense) as a challenge, else he would not have accepted it, but as a brotherly invitation to go together to their work. The Chaldee paraphrast adds that Cain, when they were in discourse in the field, maintained that there was no judgment to come, no future state, no rewards and punishments in the other world, and that when Abel spoke in defence of the truth Cain took that occasion to fall upon him. However, (5.) That which the scripture tells us was the reason why he slew him was a sufficient aggravation of the murder; it was because his own works were evil and his brother&#039;s righteous, so that herein he showed himself to be of that wicked one (Jo1 3:12), a child of the devil, as being an enemy to all righteousness, even in his own brother, and, in this, employed immediately by the destroyer. Nay, (6.) In killing his brother, he directly struck at God himself; for God&#039;s accepting Abel was the provocation pretended, and for this very reason he hated Abel, because God loved him. (7.) The murder of Abel was the more inhuman because there were now so few men in the world to replenish it. The life of a man is precious at any time; but it was in a special manner precious now, and could ill be spared.
II. As Abel&#039;s suffering. Death reigned ever since Adam sinned, but we read not of any taken captive by him till now; and now, 1. The first that dies is a saint, one that was accepted and beloved of God, to show that, though the promised seed was so far to destroy him that had the power of death as to save believers from its sting, yet still they should be exposed to its stroke. The first that went to the grave went to heaven. God would secure to himself the first-fruits, the first-born to the dead, that first opened the womb into another world. Let this take off the terror of death, that it was betimes the lot of God&#039;s chosen, which alters the property of it. Nay, 2. The first that dies is a martyr, and dies for his religion; and of such it may more truly be said than of soldiers that they die on the bed of honour. Abel&#039;s death has not only no curse in it, but it has a crown in it; so admirably well is the property of death altered that it is not only rendered innocent and inoffensive to those that die in Christ, but honourable and glorious to those that die for him. Let us not think it strange concerning the fiery trial, nor shrink if we be called to resist unto blood; for we know there is a crown of life for all that are faithful unto death.</p>

<p>We have here the law concerning the solemn trial of a wife whose husband was jealous of her. Observe,
I. What was the case supposed: That a man had some reason to suspect his wife to have committed adultery, Num 5:12-14. Here, 1. The sin of adultery is justly represented as an exceedingly sinful sin; it is going aside from God and virtue, and the good way, Pro 2:17. It is committing a trespass against the husband, robbing him of his honour, alienating his right, introducing a spurious breed into his family to share with his children in his estate, and violating her covenant with him. It is being defiled; for nothing pollutes the mind and conscience more than this sin does. 2. It is supposed to be a sin which great care is taken by the sinners to conceal, which there is no witness of. The eye of the adulterer waits for the twilight, Job 24:15. And the adulteress takes her opportunity when the good man is not at home, Pro 7:19. It would not covet to be secret if it were not shameful; and the devil who draws sinners to this sin teaches them how to cover it. 3. The spirit of jealousy is supposed to come upon the husband, of which Solomon says, It is the rage of a man (Pro 6:34), and that it is cruel as the grave, Sol 8:6. 4. &quot;Yet&quot; (say the Jewish writers) &quot;he must make it appear that he has some just cause for the suspicion.&quot; The rule they give is, &quot;If the husband have said unto his wife before witnesses, &#039;Be not thou in secret with such a man;&#039; and, notwithstanding that admonition, it is afterwards proved that she was in secret with that man, though her father or her brother, then he may compel her to drink the bitter water.&quot; But the law here does not tie him to that particular method of proving the just cause of his suspicion; it might be otherwise proved. In case it could be proved that she had committed adultery, she was to be put to death (Lev 20:10); but, if it was uncertain, then this law took place. Hence, (1.) Let all wives be admonished not to give any the least occasion for the suspicion of their chastity; it is not enough that they abstain from the evil of uncleanness, but they must abstain from all appearance of it, from every thing that looks like it, or leads to it, or may give the least umbrage to jealousy; for how great a matter may a little fire kindle! (2.) Let all husbands be admonished not to entertain any causeless or unjust suspicions of their wives. If charity in general, much more conjugal affection, teaches to think no evil, Co1 13:5. It is the happiness of the virtuous woman that the heart of her husband does safely trust in her, Pro 31:11.
II. What was the course prescribed in this case, that, if the suspected wife was innocent, she might not continue under the reproach and uneasiness of her husband&#039;s jealousy, and, if guilty, her sin might find her out, and others might hear, and fear, and take warning.
1. The process of the trial must be thus: - (1.) Her husband must bring her to the priest, with the witnesses that could prove the ground of his suspicion, and desire that she might be put upon her trial. The Jews say that the priest was first to endeavour to persuade her to confess the truth, saying to this purport, &quot;Dear daughter, perhaps thou wast overtaken by drinking wine, or wast carried away by the heat of youth or the examples of bad neighbours; come, confess the truth, for the sake of his great name which is described in the most sacred ceremony, and do not let it be blotted out with the bitter water.&quot; If she confessed, saying, &quot;I am defiled,&quot; she was not put to death, but was divorced and lost her dowry; if she said, &quot;I am pure,&quot; then they proceeded. (2.) He must bring a coarse offering of barley-meal, without oil or frankincense, agreeably to the present afflicted state of his family; for a great affliction it was either to have cause to be jealous or to be jealous without cause. It is an offering of memorial, to signify that what was to be done was intended as a religious appeal to the omniscience and justice of God. (3.) The priest was to prepare the water of jealousy, the holy water out of the laver at which the priests were to wash when they ministered; this must be brought in an earthen vessel, containing (they say) about a pint; and it must be an earthen vessel, because the coarser and plainer every thing was the more agreeable it was to the occasion. Dust must be put into the water, to signify the reproach she lay under, and the shame she ought to take to herself, putting her mouth in the dust; but dust from the floor of the tabernacle, to put an honour upon every thing that pertained to the place God had chosen to put his name there, and to keep up in the people a reverence for it; see Joh 8:6. (4.) The woman was to be set before the Lord, at the east gate of the temple-court (say the Jews), and her head was to be uncovered, in token of her sorrowful condition; and there she stood for a spectacle to the world, that other women might learn not to do after her lewdness, Eze 23:48. Only the Jews say, &quot;Her own servants were not to be present, that she might not seem vile in their sight, who were to give honour to her; her husband also must be dismissed.&quot; (5.) The priest was to adjure her to tell the truth, and to denounce the curse of God against her if she were guilty, and to declare what would be the effect of her drinking the water of jealousy, Num 5:19-22. He must assure her that, if she were innocent, the water would do her no harm, Num 5:19. None need fear the curse of the law if they have not broken the commands of the law. But, if she were guilty, this water would be poison to her, it would make her belly to swell and her thigh to rot, and she should be a curse or abomination among her people, Num 5:21, Num 5:22. To this she must say, Amen, as Israel must do to the curses pronounced on mount Ebal, Deu 27:15-26. Some think the Amen, being doubled, respects both parts of the adjuration, both that which freed her if innocent and that which condemned her if guilty. No woman, if she were guilty, could say Amen to this adjuration, and drink the water upon it, unless she disbelieved the truth of God or defied his justice, and had come to such a pitch of impudence and hard-heartedness in sin as to challenge God Almighty to do his worst, and choose rather to venture upon his curse than to give him glory by making confession; thus has whoredom taken away the heart. (6.) The priest was to write this curse in a scrip or scroll o parchment, verbatim - word for word, as he had expressed it, and then to wipe or scrape out what he had written into the water (Num 5:23), to signify that it was that curse which impregnated the water, and gave it its strength to effect what was intended. It signified that, if she were innocent, the curse should be blotted out and never appear against her, as it is written, Isa 43:25, I am he that blotteth out thy transgression, and Psa 51:9, Blot out my iniquities; but that, if she were guilty, the curse, as it was written, being infused into the water, would enter into her bowels with the water, even like oil into her bones (Psa 109:18), as we read of a curse entering into a house, Zac 5:4. (7.) The woman must then drink the water (Num 5:24); it is called the bitter water, some think because they put wormwood in it to make it bitter, or rather because it caused the curse. Thus sin is called an evil thing and a bitter for the same reason, because it causeth the curse, Jer 2:19. If she had been guilty (and otherwise it did not cause the curse), she was made to know that though her stolen waters had been sweet, and her bread eaten in secret pleasant, yet the end was bitter as wormwood, Pro 9:17, and Pro 5:4. Let all that meddle with forbidden pleasures know that they will be bitterness in the latter end. The Jews say that if, upon denouncing the curse, the woman was so terrified that she durst not drink the water, but confessed she was defiled, the priest flung down the water, and cast her offering among the ashes, and she was divorced without dowry: if she confessed not, and yet would not drink, they forced her to it; and, if she was ready to throw it up again, they hastened her away, that she might not pollute the holy place. (8.) Before she drank the water, the jealousy-offering was waved and offered upon the altar (Num 5:25, Num 5:26); a handful of it was burnt for a memorial, and the remainder of it eaten by the priest, unless the husband was a priest, and then it was scattered among the ashes. This offering in the midst of the transaction signified that the whole was an appeal to God, as a God that knows all things, and from whom no secret is hid. (9.) All things being thus performed according to the law, they were to wait the issue. The water, with a little dust put into it, and the scrapings of a written parchment, had no natural tendency at all to do either good or hurt; but if God was thus appealed to in the way of an instituted ordinance, though otherwise the innocent might have continued under suspicion and the guilty undiscovered, yet God would so far own his own institution as that in a little time, by the miraculous operation of Providence, the innocency of the innocent should be cleared, and the sin of the guilty should find them out. [1.] If the suspected woman was really guilty, the water she drank would be poison to her (Num 5:27), her belly would swell and her thigh rot by a vile disease for vile deserts, and she would mourn at the last when her flesh and body were consumed, Pro 5:11. Bishop Patrick says, from some of the Jewish writers, that the effect of these waters appeared immediately, she grew pale, and her eyes ready to start out of her head. Dr. Lightfoot says that sometimes it appeared not for two or three years, but she bore no children, was sickly, languished, and rotted at last; it is probable that some indications appeared immediately. The rabbin say that the adulterer also died in the same day and hour that the adulteress did, and in the same manner too, that he belly swelled, and his secret parts rotted: a disease perhaps not much unlike that which in these latter ages the avenging hand of a righteous God has made the scourge of uncleanness, and with which whores and whoremongers infect, and plague, and ruin one another, since they escape punishment from men. The Jewish doctors add that the waters had this effect upon the adulteress only in case the husband had never offended in the same kind; but that, if he had at any time defiled the marriage-bed, God did not thus right him against his injurious wife; and that therefore in the latter and degenerate ages of the Jewish church, when uncleanness did abound, this way of trial was generally disused and laid aside; men, knowing their own crimes, were content not to know their wives&#039; crimes. And to this perhaps may refer the threatening (Hos 4:14), I will not punish your spouses when they commit adultery, for you yourselves are separated with whores. [2.] If she were innocent, the water she drank would be physic to her: She shall be free, and shall conceive seed, Num 5:28. The Jewish writers magnify the good effects of this water to the innocent woman, that, to recompense her for the wrong done to her by the suspicion, she should, after the drinking of these waters, be stronger and look better than ever; if she was sickly, she should become healthful, should bear a man-child, and have easy labour.
2. From the whole we may learn, (1.) That secret sins are known to God, and sometimes are strangely brought to light in this life; however, there is a day coming when God will, by Jesus Christ, as here by the priest, judge the secrets of men according to the gospel, Rom 2:16. (2.) That, in particular, Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. The violation of conjugal faith and chastity is highly provoking to the God of heaven, and sooner or later it will be reckoned for. Though we have not now the waters of jealousy to be a sensible terror to the unclean, yet we have a word from God which ought to be as great a terror, that if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy, Co1 3:17. (3.) That God will find out some way or other to clear the innocency of the innocent, and to bring forth their righteousness as the light. (4.) That to the pure all things are pure, but to the defiled nothing is so, Tit 1:15. The same word is to some a savour of life unto life, to others a savour of death unto death, like those waters of jealousy, according as they receive it; the same providence is for good to some and for hurt to others, Jer 24:5, Jer 24:8, Jer 24:9. And, whatsoever it is intended for, it shall not return void.</p>

<p>Here is, I. The righteous sentence which God gave against Israel for their murmuring and unbelief, which, though afterwards mitigated, showed what was the desert of their sin and the demand of injured justice, and what would have been done if Moses had not interposed. When the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle we may suppose that Moses took it for a call to him immediately to come and attend there, as before the tabernacle was erected he went up to the mount in a similar case, Exo 32:30. Thus, while the people were studying to disgrace him, God publicly put honour upon him, as the man of his counsel. Now here we are told what God said to him there.
1. He showed him the great evil of the people&#039;s sin, Num 14:11. What passed between God and Israel went through the hands of Moses: when they were displeased with God they told Moses of it (Num 14:2); when God was displeased with them he told Moses too, revealing his secret to his servant the prophet, Amo 3:7. Two things God justly complains of to Moses: - (1.) Their sin. They provoke me, or (as the word signifies) they reject, reproach, despise me, for they will not believe me. This was the bitter root which bore the gall and wormwood. It was their unbelief that made this a day of provocation in the wilderness, Heb 3:8. Note, Distrust of God, of his power and promise, is itself a very great provocation, and at the bottom of many other provocations. Unbelief is a great sin (Jo1 5:10), and a root sin, Heb 3:12. (2.) Their continuance in it: How long will they do so? Note, The God of heaven keeps an account how long sinners persist in their provocations; and the longer they persist the more he is displeased. The aggravations of their sin were, [1.] Their relation to God: This people, a peculiar people, a professing people. The nearer any are to God in name and profession, the more he is provoked by their sins, especially their unbelief. [2.] The experience they had had of God&#039;s power and goodness, in all the signs which he had shown among them, by which, one would think, he had effectually obliged them to trust him and follow him. The more God has done for us the greater is the provocation if we distrust him.
2. He showed him the sentence which justice passed upon them for it, Num 14:12. &quot;What remains now but that I should make a full end of them? It will soon be done. I will smite them with the pestilence, not leave a man of them alive, but wholly blot out their name and race, and so disinherit them, and be no more troubled with them. Ah, I will ease me of my adversaries. They wish to die; and let them die, and neither root nor branch be left of them. Such rebellious children deserve to be disinherited.&quot; And if it be asked, &quot;What will become of God&#039;s covenant with Abraham then?&quot; here is an answer, &quot;I shall be preserved in the family of Moses: I will make of thee a greater nation.&quot; Thus, (1.) God would try Moses, whether he still continued that affection for Israel which he formerly expressed upon a like occasion, in preferring their interests before the advancement of his own family; and it is proved that Moses was still of the same public spirit, and could not bear the thought of raising his own name upon the ruin of the name of Israel. (2.) God would teach us that he will not be a loser by the ruin of sinners. If Adam and Eve had been cut off and disinherited, he could have made another Adam and another Eve, and have glorified his mercy in them, as here he could have glorified his mercy in Moses, though Israel had been ruined.
II. The humble intercession Moses made for them. Their sin had made a fatal breach in the wall of their defence, at which destruction would certainly have entered if Moses had not seasonably stepped in and made it good. Here he was a type of Christ, who interceded for his persecutors, and prayed for those that despitefully used him, leaving us an example to his own rule, Mat 5:44.
1. The prayer of his petition is, in one word, Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people (Num 14:19), that is, &quot;Do not bring upon them the ruin they deserve.&quot; This was Christ&#039;s prayer for those that crucified him, Father forgive them. The pardon of a national sin, as such, consists in the turning away of the national punishment; and that is it for which Moses is here so earnest.
2. The pleas are many, and strongly urged.
(1.) He insists most upon the plea that is taken from the glory of God, Num 14:13-16. With this he begins, and somewhat abruptly, taking occasion from that dreadful word, I will disinherit them. Lord (says he), then the Egyptians shall hear it. God&#039;s honour lay nearer to his heart than any interests of his own. Observe how he orders this cause before God. He pleads, [1.] That the eyes both of Egypt and Canaan were upon them, and great expectations were raised concerning them. They could not but have heard that thou, Lord, art among this people, Num 14:14. The neighbouring countries rang of it, how much this people were the particular care of heaven, so as never any people under the sun were. [2.] That if they should be cut off great notice would be taken of it. &quot;The Egyptians will hear it (Num 14:13), for they have their spies among us, and they will tell it to the inhabitants of the land&quot; (Num 14:14); for there was great correspondence between Egypt and Canaan, although not by the way of this wilderness. &quot;If this people that have made so great a noise be all consumed, if their mighty pretensions come to nothing, and their light go out in a snuff, it will be told with pleasure in Gath, and published in the streets of Askelon; and what construction will the heathen put upon it? It will be impossible to make them understand it as an act of God&#039;s justice, and as such redounding to God&#039;s honour; brutish men know not this (Psa 92:6): but they will impute it to the failing of God&#039;s power, and so turn it to his reproach, Num 14:16. They will say, He slew them in the wilderness because he was not able to bring them to Canaan, his arm being shortened, and his stock of miracles being spent. Now, Lord, let not one attribute be glorified at the expense of another; rather let mercy rejoice against judgment than that almighty power should be impeached.&quot; Note, The best pleas in prayer are those that are taken from God&#039;s honour; for they agree with the first petition of the Lord&#039;s Prayer, Hallowed be thy name. Do not disgrace the throne of thy glory. God pleads it with himself (Deu 32:27), I feareth the wrath of the enemy; and we should use it as an argument with ourselves to walk so in every thing as to give no occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, Ti1 6:1.
(2.) He pleads God&#039;s proclamation of his name at Horeb (Num 14:17, Num 14:18): Let the power of the Lord be great. Power is here put for pardoning mercy; it is his power over his own anger. If he should destroy them, God&#039;s power would be questioned; if he should continue and complete their salvation, notwithstanding the difficulties that arose, not only from the strength of their enemies, but from their own provocations, this would greatly magnify the divine power: what cannot he do who could make so weak a people conquerors and such an unworthy people favourites? The more danger there is of others reproaching God&#039;s power the more desirous we should be to see it glorified. To enforce this petition, he refers to the word which God had spoken: The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy. God&#039;s goodness had there been spoken of as his glory; God gloried in it, Exo 34:6, Exo 34:7. Now here he prays that upon this occasion he would glorify it. Note, We must take our encouragement in prayer from the word of God, upon which he has caused us to hope, Psa 119:49. &quot;Lord, be and do according as thou hast spoken; for hast thou spoken, and wilt thou not make it good?&quot; Three things God had solemnly made a declaration of, which Moses here fastens upon, and improves for the enforcing of his petition: - [1.] The goodness of God&#039;s nature in general, that he is long-suffering, or slow to anger, and of great mercy; not soon provoked, but tender and compassionate towards offenders. [2.] His readiness in particular to pardon sin: Forgiving iniquity and transgression, sins of all sorts. [3.] His unwillingness to proceed to extremity, even when he does punish. For in this sense the following words may be read: That will by no means make quite desolate, in visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children. God had indeed said in the second commandment that he would thus visit, but here he promises not to make a full end of families, churches, and nations, at once; and so it is very applicable to this occasion, for Moses cannot beg that God would not at all punish this sin (it would be too great an encouragement to rebellion if he should set no mark of his displeasure upon it), but that he would not kill all this people as one man, Num 14:15. He does not ask that they may not be corrected, but that they may not be disinherited. And this proclamation of God&#039;s name was the more apposite to his purpose because it was made upon occasion of the pardoning of their sin in making the golden calf. This sin which they had now fallen into was bad enough, but it was not idolatry.
(3.) He pleads past experience: As thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt, Num 14:19. This seemed to make against him. Why should those be forgiven any more who, after they had been so often forgiven, revolted yet more and more, and seemed hardened and encouraged in their rebellion by the lenity and patience of their God, and the frequent pardons they had obtained? Among men it would have been thought impolitic to take notice of such a circumstance in a request of this nature, as it might operate to the prejudice of the petitioner: but, as in other things so in pardoning sin, God&#039;s thoughts and ways are infinitely above ours, Isa 55:9. Moses looks upon it as a good plea, Lord, forgive, as thou hast forgiven. It will be no more a reproach to thy justice, nor any less the praise of thy mercy, to forgive now, than it has been formerly. Therefore the sons of Jacob are not consumed, because they have to do with a God that changes not, Mal 3:6.</p>

<p>It appears by the length of the sentences here, and by the copiousness and pungency of the expressions, that Moses, now that he was drawing near to the close of his discourse, was very warm and zealous, and very desirous to impress what he said upon the minds of this unthinking people. To bind them the faster to God and duty, he here, with great solemnity of expression (to make up the want of the external ceremony that was used Exo 24:4 etc.), concludes a bargain (as it were) between them and God, an everlasting covenant, which God would not forget and they must not. He requires not their explicit consent, but lays the matter plainly before them, and then leaves it between God and their own consciences. Observe,
I. The parties to this covenant. 1. It is the Lord their God they are to covenant with, Deu 29:12. To him they must give up themselves, to him they must join themselves. &quot;It is his oath; he has drawn up the covenant and settled it; he requires your consent to it; he has sworn to you and to him you must be sworn.&quot; This requires us to be sincere and serious, humble and reverent, in our covenant-transactions with God, remembering how great a God he is with whom we are covenanting, who has a perfect knowledge of us and an absolute dominion over us. 2. They are all to be taken into covenant with him. They were all summoned to attend (Deu 29:2), and did accordingly, and are told (Deu 29:10) what was the design of their appearing before God now in a body - they were to enter into covenant with him. (1.) Even their great men, the captains of their tribes, their elders and officers, must not think it any disparagement to their honour, or any diminution of their power, to put their necks under the yoke of this covenant, and to draw in it. They must rather enter into the covenant first, to set a good example to their inferiors. (2.) Not the men only, but their wives and children, must come into this covenant; though they were not numbered and mustered, yet they must be joined to the Lord, Deu 29:11. Observe, Even little ones are capable of being taken into covenant with God, and are to be admitted with their parents. Little children, so little as to be carried in arms, must be brought to Christ, and shall be blessed by him, for of such was and is the kingdom of God. (3.) Not the men of Israel only, but the stranger that was in their camp, provided he was so far proselyted to their religion as to renounce all false gods, was taken into this covenant with the God of Israel, forasmuch as he also, though a stranger, was to be looked upon in this matter as a son of Abraham, Luk 19:9. This was an early indication of favour to the Gentiles, and of the kindness God had in store for them. (4.) Not the freemen only, but the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the meanest drudge they had among them. Note, As none are too great to come under the bonds of the covenant, so none are too mean to inherit the blessings of the covenant. In Christ no difference is made between bond and free, Col 3:11. Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it, Co1 7:21. (5.) Not only those that were now present before God in this solemn assembly, but those also that were not here with them were taken into covenant (Deu 29:15): As with him that standeth here with us (so bishop Patrick thinks it should be rendered) so also with him, that is not here with us this day; that is, [1.] Those that tarried at home were included; though detained either by sickness or necessary business, they must not therefore think themselves disengaged; no, every Israelite shares in the common blessings. Those that tarry at home divide the spoil, and therefore every Israelite must own himself bound by the consent of the representative body. Those who cannot go up to the house of the Lord must keep up a spiritual communion with those that do, and be present in spirit when they are absent in body. [2.] The generations to come are included. Nay, one of the Chaldee paraphrasts reads it, All the generations that have been from the first days of the world, and all that shall arise to the end of the whole world, stand with us here this day. And so, taking this covenant as a typical dispensation of the covenant of grace, it is a noble testimony to the Mediator of that covenant, who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever.
II. The summary of this covenant. All the precepts and all the promises of the covenant are included in the covenant-relation between God and them, Deu 29:13. That they should be appointed, raised up, established, for a people to him, to observe and obey him, to be devoted to him and dependent on him, and that he should be to them a God, according to the tenour of the covenant made with their fathers, to make them holy, high, and happy Their fathers are here named, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as examples of piety, which those were to set themselves to imitate who expected any benefit from the covenant made with them. Note, A due consideration of the relation we stand in to God as our God, and of the obligation we lie under as a people to him, is enough to bring us to all the duties and all the comforts of the covenant.
III. The principal design of the renewing of this covenant at this time was to fortify them against temptations to idolatry. Though other sins will be the sinner&#039;s ruin, yet this was the sin that was likely to be their ruin. Now concerning this he shows,
1. The danger they were in of being tempted to it (Deu 29:16, Deu 29:17): &quot;You know we have dwelt in the land of Egypt, a country addicted to idolatry; and it were well if there were not among you some remains of the infection of that idolatry; we have passed by other nations, the Edomites, Moabites, etc. and have seen their abominations and their idols, and some among you, it may be, have liked them too well, and still hanker after them, and would rather worship a wooden god that they can see than an infinite Spirit whom they never saw.&quot; It is to be hoped that there were those among them who, the more they saw of these abominations and idols, the more they hated them; but there were those that were smitten with the sight of them, saw the accursed things and coveted them.
2. The danger they were in if they yielded to the temptation. He gives them fair warning: it was at their peril if they forsook God to serve idols. If they would not be bound and held by the precepts of the covenant, they would find that the curses of the covenant would be strong enough to bind and hold them.
(1.) Idolatry would be the ruin of particular persons and their families, Deu 29:18-21, where observe,
[1.] The sinner described, Deu 29:18. First, He is one whose heart turns away from his God; there the mischief begins, in the evil heart of unbelief, which inclines men to depart from the living God to dead idols. Even to this sin men are tempted when they are drawn aside by their own lusts and fancies. Those that begin to turn from God, by neglecting their duty to him, are easily drawn to other gods: and those that serve other gods do certainly turn away from the true God; for he will admit of no rivals: he will be all or nothing. Secondly, He is a root that bears gall and wormwood; that is, he is a dangerous man, who, being himself poisoned with bad principles and inclinations, with a secret contempt of the God of Israel and his institutions and a veneration for the gods of the nations, endeavours, by all arts possible, to corrupt and poison others and draw them to idolatry: this is a man whose fruit is hemlock (so the word is translated, Hos 10:4) and wormwood; it is very displeasing to God, and will be, to all that are seduced by him, bitterness in the latter end. This is referred to by the apostle, Heb 12:15, where he is in like manner cautioning us to take heed of those that would seduce us from the Christian faith; they are the weeds or tares in a field, which, if let alone, will overspread the whole field. A little of this leaven will be in danger of infecting the whole lump.
[2.] His security in the sun. He promises himself impunity, though he persists in his impiety, Deu 29:19. Though he hears the words of the curse, so that he cannot plead ignorance of the danger, as other idolaters, yet even then he blesses himself in his own heart, thinks himself safe from the wrath of the God of Israel, under the protection of his idol-gods, and therefore says, &quot;I shall have peace, though I be governed in my religion, not by God&#039;s institution, but by my own imagination, to add drunkenness to thirst, one act of wickedness to another.&quot; Idolaters were like drunkards, violently set upon their idols themselves and industrious to draw others in with them. Revellings commonly accompanied their idolatries (Pe1 4:3), so that this speaks a woe to drunkards (especially the drunkards of Ephraim), who, when they are awake, being thirsty, seek it yet again, Pro 23:35. And those that made themselves drunk in honour of their idols were the worst of drunkards. Note, First, There are many who are under the curse of God and yet bless themselves; but it will soon be found that in blessing themselves they do but deceive themselves. Secondly, Those are ripe for ruin, and there is little hope of their repentance, who have made themselves believe that they shall have peace though they go on in a sinful way. Thirdly, Drunkenness is a sin that hardens the heart, and debauches the conscience, as much as any other, a sin to which men are strangely tempted themselves even when they have lately felt the mischiefs of it, and to which they are strangely fond of drawing others, Hab 2:15. And such an ensnaring sin is idolatry.
[3.] God&#039;s just severity against him for the sin, and for the impious affront he put upon God in saying he should have peace though he went on, so giving the lie to eternal truth, Gen 3:4. There is scarcely a threatening in all the book of God that sounds more dreadful than this. O that presumptuous sinners would read it and tremble! For it is not a bug-bear to frighten children and fools, but a real declaration of the wrath of God against the ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men, Deu 29:20, Deu 29:21. First, The Lord shall not spare him. The days of his reprieve, which he abuses, will be shortened, and no mercy remembered in the midst of judgment. Secondly, The anger of the Lord, and his jealousy, which is the fiercest anger, shall smoke against him, like the smoke of a furnace. Thirdly, The curses written shall lie upon him, not only light upon him to terrify him, but abide upon him, to sink him to the lowest hell, Joh 3:36. Fourthly, His name shall be blotted out, that is, he himself shall be cut off, and his memory shall rot and perish with him. Fifthly, He shall be separated unto evil, which is the most proper notion of a curse; he shall be cut off from all happiness and all hope of it, and marked out for misery without remedy. And (lastly) All this according to the curses of the covenant, which are the most fearful curses, being the just revenges of abused grace.
(2.) Idolatry would be the ruin of their nation; it would bring plagues upon the land that connived at this root of bitterness and received the infection; as far as the sin spread, the judgment should spread likewise.
[1.] The ruin is described. It begins with plagues and sicknesses (Deu 29:22), to try if they will be reclaimed by less judgments; but, if not, it ends in a total overthrow, like that of Sodom, Deu 29:23. As that valley, which had been like the garden of the Lord for fruitfulness, was turned into a lake of salt and sulphur, so should the land of Canaan be made desolate and barren, as it has been ever since the last destruction of it by the Romans. The lake of Sodom bordered closely upon the land of Israel, that by it they might be warned against the iniquity of Sodom; but, not taking the warning, they were made as like to Sodom in ruin as they had been in sin.
[2.] The reason of it is enquired into, and assigned. First, It would be enquired into by the generations to come (v. 22), who would find the state of their nation in all respects the reverse of what it had been, and, when they read both the history and the promise, would be astonished at the change. The stranger likewise, and the nations about them, as well as particular persons, would ask, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? v. 24. Great desolations are thus represented elsewhere as striking the spectators with amazement, Kg1 9:8, Kg1 9:9; Jer 22:8, Jer 22:9. It was time for the neighbours to tremble when judgment thus began at the house of God, Pe1 4:17. The emphasis of the question is to be laid upon this land, the land of Canaan, this good land, the glory of all lands, this land flowing with milk and honey. A thousand pities that such a good land as this should be made desolate, but this is not all; it is this holy land, the land of Israel, a people in covenant with God; it is Immanuel&#039;s land, a land where God was known and worshipped, and yet thus wasted. Note, 1. It is no new thing for God to bring desolating judgments upon a people that in profession are near to him, Amo 3:2. 2. He never does this without a good reason. 3. It concerns us to enquire into the reason, that we may give glory to God and take warning to ourselves. Secondly, The reason is here assigned, in answer to that enquiry. The matter would be so plain that all men would say, It was because they forsook the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, Deu 29:25. Note, God never forsakes any till they first forsake him. But those that desert the God of their fathers are justly cast out of the inheritance of their fathers. They went and served other gods (Deu 29:26), gods that they had no acquaintance with, nor lay under any obligation to either in duty of gratitude; for God has not given the creatures to be served by us, but to serve us; nor have they done any good to us (as some read it), more than what God has enabled them to do; to the Creator therefore we are debtors, and not to the creatures. It was for this that God was angry with them (Deu 29:27), and rooted them out in anger, Deu 29:28. So that, how dreadful soever the desolation was, the Lord was righteous in it, which is acknowledged, Dan 9:11-14. &quot;Thus&quot; (says Mr. Ainsworth) &quot;the law of Moses leaves sinners under the curse, and rooted out of the Lord&#039;s land; but the grace of Christ towards penitent believing sinners plants them again upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up, being kept by the power of God,&quot; Amo 9:15.
[3.] He concludes his prophecy of the Jews&#039; rejection just as St. Paul concludes his discourse on the same subject, when it began to be fulfilled (Rom 11:33), How unsearchable are God&#039;s judgments, and his ways past finding out! So here (Deu 29:29), Secret things belong to the Lord our God. Some make it to be one sentence, The secret things of the Lord our God are revealed to us and to our children, as far as we are concerned to know them, and he hath not dealt so with other nations: but we make it two sentences, by which, First, We are forbidden curiously to enquire into the secret counsels of God and to determine concerning them. A full answer is given to that question, Wherefore has the Lord done thus to this land? sufficient to justify God and admonish us. But if any ask further why God would be at such a vast expense of miracles to form such a people, whose apostasy and ruin he plainly foresaw, why he did not by his almighty grace prevent it, or what he intends yet to do with them, let such know that these are questions which cannot be answered, and therefore are not fit to be asked. It is presumption in us to pry into the Arcana imperii - the mysteries of government, and to enquire into the reasons of state which it is not for us to know. See Act 1:7; Joh 21:22; Col 2:18. Secondly, We are directed and encouraged diligently to enquire into that which God has made known: things revealed belong to us and to our children. Note, 1. Though God has kept much of his counsel secret, yet there is enough revealed to satisfy and save us. He has kept back nothing that is profitable for us, but that only which it is good for us to be ignorant of. 2. We ought to acquaint ourselves, and our children too, with the things of God that are revealed. We are not only allowed to search into them, but are concerned to do so. They are things which we and ours are nearly interested in. They are the rules we are to live by, the grants we are to live upon; and therefore we are to learn them diligently ourselves, and to teach them diligently to our children. 3. All our knowledge must be in order to practice, for this is the end of all divine revelation, not to furnish us with curious subjects of speculation and discourse, with which to entertain ourselves and our friends, but that we may do all the words of this law, and be blessed in our deed.</p>

<p>Here we have, I. The descent which the Amalekites made upon Ziklag in David&#039;s absence, and the desolations they made there. They surprised the city when it was left unguarded, plundered it, burnt it, and carried all the women and children captives, Sa1 30:1, Sa1 30:2. They intended, by this to revenge the like havoc that David had lately made of them and their country, Sa1 27:8. He that had made so many enemies ought not to have left his own concerns so naked and defenceless. Those that make bold with others must expect that others will make as bold with them and provide accordingly. Now observe in this, 1. The cruelty of Saul&#039;s pity (as it proved) in sparing the Amalekites; if he had utterly destroyed them, as he ought to have done, these would not have been in being to do this mischief. 2. How David was corrected for being so forward to go with the Philistines against Israel. God showed him that he had better have staid at home and looked after his own business. When we go abroad in the way of our duty we may comfortably hope that God will take care of our families in our absence, but not otherwise. 3. How wonderfully God inclined the hearts of these Amalekites to carry the women and children away captives, and not to kill them. When David invaded them he put all to the sword (Sa1 27:9), and no reason can be given why they did not retaliate upon this city, but that God restrained them; for he has all hearts in his hands, and says to the fury of the most cruel men, Hitherto thou shalt come, and no further. Whether they spared them to lead them in triumph, or to sell them, or to use them for slaves, God&#039;s hand must be acknowledged, who designed to make use of the Amalekites for the correction, not for the destruction, of the house of David.
II. The confusion and consternation that David and his men were in when they found their houses in ashes and their wives and children gone into captivity. Three days&#039; march they had from the camp of the Philistines to Ziklag, and now that they came thither weary, but hoping to find rest in their houses and joy in their families, behold a black and dismal scene was presented to them (Sa1 30:3), which made them all weep (David himself not excepted), though they were men of war, till they had no more power to weep, Sa1 30:4. The mention of David&#039;s wives, Ahinoam and Abigail, and their being carried captive, intimates that this circumstance went nearer his heart than any thing else. Note, It is no disparagement to the boldest and bravest spirits to lament the calamities of relations and friends. Observe, 1. This trouble came upon them when they were absent. It was the ancient policy of Amalek to take Israel at an advantage. 2. It met them at their return, and, for aught that appears, their own eyes gave them the first intelligence of it. Note, When we go abroad we cannot foresee what evil tidings may meet us when we come home again. The going out may be very cheerful, and yet the coming in be very doleful. Boast not thyself therefore of tomorrow, nor of tonight either, for thou knowest not what a day, or a piece of a day, may bring forth, Pro 27:1. If, when we come off a journey, we find our tabernacles in peace, and not laid waste as David here found his, let the Lord be praised for it.
III. The mutiny and murmuring of David&#039;s men against him (Sa1 30:6): David was greatly distressed, for, in the midst of all his losses, his own people spoke of stoning him, 1. Because they looked upon him as the occasion of their calamities, by the provocation he had given the Amalekites, and his indiscretion in leaving Ziklag without a garrison in it. Thus apt are we, when we are in trouble, to fly into a rage against those who are in any way the occasion of our trouble, while we overlook the divine providence, and have not that regard to the operations of God&#039;s hand in it which would silence our passions, and make us patient. 2. Because now they began to despair of that preferment which they had promised themselves in following David. They hoped ere this to have been all princes; and now to find themselves all beggars was such a disappointment to them as made them grow outrageous, and threaten the life of him on whom, under God, they had the greatest dependence. What absurdities will not ungoverned passions plunge men into? This was a sore trial to the man after God&#039;s own heart, and could not but go very near him. Saul had driven him from his country, the Philistines had driven him from their camp, the Amalekites had plundered his city, his wives were taken prisoners, and now, to complete his woe, his own familiar friends, in whom he trusted, whom he had sheltered, and who did eat of his bread, instead of sympathizing with him and offering him any relief, lifted up the heel against him and threatened to stone him. Great faith must expect such severe exercises. But it is observable that David was reduced to this extremity just before his accession to the throne. At this very time, perhaps, the stroke was struck which opened the door to his advancement. Things are sometimes at the worst with the church and people of God just before they begin to mend.
IV. David&#039;s pious dependence upon the divine providence and grace in this distress: But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God. His men fretted at their loss. The soul of the people was bitter, so the word is. Their own discontent and impatience added wormwood and gall to the affliction and misery, and made their case doubly grievous. But 1. David bore it better, though he had more reason than any of them to lament it; they gave liberty to their passions, but he set his graces on work, and by encouraging himself in God, while they dispirited each other, he kept his spirit calm and sedate. Or, 2. There may be a reference to the threatening words his men gave out against him. They spoke of stoning him; but he, not offering to avenge the affront, nor terrified by their menaces, encouraged himself in the Lord his God, believed, and considered with application to his present case, the power and providence of God, his justice and goodness, the method he commonly takes of bringing low and then raising up, his care of his people that serve him and trust in him, and the particular promises he had made to him of bringing him safely to the throne; with these considerations he supported himself, not doubting but the present trouble would end well. Note, Those that have taken the Lord for their God may take encouragement from their relation to him in the worst of times. It is the duty and interest of all good people, whatever happens, to encourage themselves in God as their Lord and their God, assuring themselves that he can and will bring light out of darkness, peace out of trouble, and good out of evil, to all that love him and are the called according to his purpose, Rom 8:28. It was David&#039;s practice, and he had the comfort of it, What time I am afraid I will trust in thee. When he was at his wits&#039; end he was not at his faith&#039;s end.</p>

<p>Here we have, I. The fidelity of the priests and Levites and their firm adherence to David and his interest. They knew David&#039;s great affection to them and their office, notwithstanding his failings. The method Absalom took to gain people&#039;s affections made no impression upon them; he had little religion in him, and therefore they steadily adhered to David. Zadok and Abiathar, and all the Levites, if he go, will accompany him, and take the ark with them, that, by it, they may ask counsel of God for him, Sa2 15:24. Note, Those that are friends to the ark in their prosperity will find it a friend to them in their adversity. Formerly David would not rest till he had found a resting-place for the ark; and now, if the priests may have their mind, the ark shall not rest till David return to his rest.
II. David&#039;s dismission of them back into the city, Sa2 15:25, Sa2 15:26. Abiathar was high priest (Kg1 2:35), but Zadok was his assistant, and attended the ark most closely, while Abiathar was active in public business, Sa2 15:24. Therefore David directs his speech to Zadok, and an excellent speech it is, and shows him to be in a very good frame under his affliction, and that still he holds fast his integrity. 1. He is very solicitous for the safety of the ark: &quot;By all means carry the ark back into the city, let not that be unsettled and exposed with me, lodge that again in the tent pitched for it; surely Absalom, bad as he is, will do that no harm.&quot; David&#039;s heart, like Eli&#039;s trembles for the ark of God. Note, It argues a good principle to be more concerned for the church&#039;s prosperity than for our own, to prefer Jerusalem before our chief joy (Psa 137:6), the success of the gospel, and the flourishing of the church, above our own wealth, credit, ease, and safety, even when they are most in hazard. 2. He is very desirous to return to the enjoyment of the privileges of God&#039;s house. He will reckon it the greatest instance of God&#039;s favour to him if he may but once more be brought back to see it and his habitation. This will be more his joy than to be brought back to his own palace and throne again. Note, Gracious souls measure their comforts and conveniences in this world by the opportunity they give them of communion with God. Hezekiah wished for the recovery of his health for this reason, that he might go up to the house of the Lord, Isa 38:22. 3. He is very submissive to the holy will of God concerning the issue of this dark dispensation. He hopes the best (Sa2 15:25), and hopes for it from the favour of God, which he looks upon to be the fountain of all good: &quot;If God favour me so far, I shall be settled again as formerly.&quot; But he provides for the worst: &quot;If he deny me this favour - if he thus say, I have no delight in thee - I know I deserve the continuance of his displeasure; his holy will be done.&quot; See him here patiently awaiting the event: &quot;Behold, here am I, as a servant expecting orders;&quot; and see him willing to commit himself to God concerning it: &quot;Let him do to me as seemeth good to him. I have nothing to object. All is well that God does.&quot; Observe with what satisfaction and holy complacency he speaks of the divine disposal: not only, &quot;He can do what he will,&quot; subscribing to his power (Job 9:12), or, &quot;He has a right to do what he will,&quot; subscribing to his sovereignty (Job 33:13), or, &quot;He will do what he will,&quot; subscribing to his unchangeableness (Job 23:13, Job 23:15), but, &quot;Let him to what he will,&quot; subscribing to his wisdom and goodness. Note, It is our interest, as well as duty, cheerfully to acquiesce in the will of God, whatever befals us. That we may not complain of what is, let us see God&#039;s hand in all events; and, that we may not be afraid of what shall be, let us see all events in God&#039;s hand.
III. The confidence David put in the priests that they would serve his interest to the utmost of their power in his absence. He calls Zadok a seer (Sa2 15:27), that is, a wise man, a man that can see into business and discern time and judgment: &quot;Thou hast thy eyes in thy head (Ecc 2:14), and therefore art capable of doing me service, especially by sending me intelligence of the enemy&#039;s motions and resolutions.&quot; One friend that is a seer, in such an exigency as this, was worth twenty that were not so quick-sighted. For the settling of a private correspondence with the priests in his absence, he appoints, 1. Whom they should send to him - their two sons, Ahimaaz and Jonathan, whose coat, it might be hoped, would be their protection, and of whose prudence and faithfulness he had probably had experience. 2. Whither they should send. He would encamp in the plain of the wilderness till he heard from them (Sa2 15:28), and then would move according to the information and advice they should send him. Hereupon they returned to the city, to await the event. It was a pity that any disturbance should be given to a state so happy as this was, when the prince and the priests had such an entire affection for the confidence in each other.
IV. The melancholy posture that David and his men put themselves into, when, at the beginning of their march, they went up the mount of Olives, Sa2 15:30.
1. David himself, as a deep mourner, covered his head and face for shame and blushing, went bare-foot, as a prisoner or a slave, for mortification, and went weeping. Did it become a man of his reputation for courage and greatness of spirit thus to cry like a child, only for fear of an enemy at a distance, against whom he might easily have made head, and perhaps with one bold stroke have routed him? Yes, it did not ill become him, considering how much there was in this trouble, (1.) Of the unkindness of his son. He could not but weep to think that one who came out of his bowels, and had so often lain in his arms, should thus lift up the heel against him. God himself is said to be grieved with the rebellions of his own children (Psa 95:10) and even broken with their whorish heart, Eze 6:9. (2.) There was much of the displeasure of his God in it. This infused the wormwood and gall into the affliction and misery, Lam 3:19. His sin was ever before him (Psa 51:3), but never so plain nor ever appearing so black as now. He never wept thus when Saul hunted him: but a wounded conscience makes troubles lie heavily, Psa 38:4.
2. When David wept all his company wept likewise, being much affected with his grief and willing to share in it. It is our duty to weep with those that weep, especially our superiors, and those that are better than we; for, if this be done in the green tree, what will be done in the dry? We must weep with those that weep for sin. When Hezekiah humbled himself for his sin all Jerusalem joined with him, Ch2 32:26. To prevent suffering with sinners, let us sorrow with them.</p>

<p>We have here an account,
I. Of the tribe of Ephraim. Great things we read of that tribe when it came to maturity. Here we have an account of the disasters of its infancy, while it was in Egypt as it should seem; for Ephraim himself was alive when those things were done, which yet is hard to imagine if it were, as is here computed, seven generations off. Therefore I am apt to think that either it was another Ephraim or that those who were slain were the immediate sons of that Ephraim that was the son of Joseph. In this passage, which is related here only, we have, 1. The great breach that was made upon the family of Ephraim. The men of Gath, Philistines, giants, slew many of the sons of that family, because they came down to take away their cattle, Ch1 7:21. It is uncertain who were the aggressors here. Some make the men of Gath the aggressors, men born in the land of Egypt, but now resident in Gath, supposing that they came down into the land of Goshen, to drive away the Ephraimites&#039; cattle, and slew the owners, because they stood up in the defence of them. Many a man&#039;s life has been exposed and betrayed by his wealth; so far is it from being a strong city. Others think that the Ephraimites made a descent upon the men of Gath to plunder them, presuming that the time had come when they should be put in possession of Canaan; but they paid dearly for their rashness and precipitation. Those that will not wait God&#039;s time cannot expect God&#039;s blessing. I rather think that the men of Gath came down upon the Ephraimites, because the Israelites in Egypt were shepherds, not soldiers, abounded in cattle of their own, and therefore were not likely to venture their lives for their neighbours&#039; cattle: and the words may be read, The men of Gath slew them, for they came down to take away their cattle. Zabad the son of Ephraim, and Shuthelah, and Ezer, and Elead (his grandchildren), were, as Dr. Lightfoot thinks, the men that were slain. Jacob had foretold that the seed of Ephraim should become a multitude of nations (Gen 48:19), and yet that plant is thus nipped in the bud. God&#039;s providences often seem to contradict his promises; but, when they do so, they really magnify the promise, and make the performance of it, notwithstanding, so much more illustrious. The Ephraimites were the posterity of Joseph, and yet his power could not protect them, though some think he was yet living. The sword devours one as well as another. 2. The great grief which oppressed the father of the family hereupon: Ephraim mourned many days. Nothing brings the aged to the grave with more sorrow than their following the young that descend from them to the grave first, especially if in blood. It is often the burden of those that live to be old that they see those go before them of whom they said, These same shall comfort us. It was a brotherly friendly office which his brethren did, when they came to comfort him under this great affliction, to express their sympathy with him and concern for him, and to suggest that to him which would support and quiet him under this sad providence. Probably they reminded him of the promise of increase which Jacob had blessed him when he laid his right hand upon his head. Although his house was not so with God as he hoped, but a house of mourning, a shattered family, yet that promise was sure, Sa2 23:5. 3. The repair of this breach, in some measure, by addition of another son to his family in his old age (Ch1 7:23), like Seth, another seed instead of that of Abel whom Cain slew, Gen 4:25. When God thus restores comfort to his mourners, makes glad according to the days wherein he afflicted, setting the mercies over against the crosses, we ought therein to take notice of the kindness and tenderness of divine Providence; it is as if it repented God concerning his servants, Psa 90:13, Psa 90:15. Yet joy that a man was born into his family could not make him forget his grief; for he gives a melancholy name to his son, Beriah - in trouble, for he was born when the family was in mourning, when it went evil with his house. It is good to have in remembrance the affliction and the misery, the wormwood and the gall, that our souls may be humbled within us, Lam 3:19, Lam 3:20. What name more proper for man that is born of a woman than Beriah, because born into a troublesome world? It is added, as a further honour to the house of Ephraim, (1.) That a daughter of that tribe, Sherah by name, at the time of Israel&#039;s setting in Canaan, built some cities, either at her own charge or by her own care; one of them bore her name, Uzzen-sherah, Ch1 7:24. A virtuous woman may be as great an honour and blessing to a family as a mighty man. (2.) That a son of that tribe was employed in the conquest of Canaan, Joshua the son of Nun, Ch1 7:27. In this also the breach made on Ephraim&#039;s family was further repaired; and perhaps the resentment of this injury formerly done by the Canaanites to the Ephraimites might make him more vigorous in the war.
II. Of the tribe of Asher. Some men of note of that tribe are here named. Their militia was not numerous in comparison with some other tribes, only 26,000 men in all; but their princes were choice and mighty men of valour, chief of the princes (Ch1 7:40), and perhaps it was their wisdom that they coveted not to make their trained bands numerous, but rather to have a few, and those apt to the war and serviceable men.</p>

<p>Here is, I. A plain and faithful reproof given to Asa by a prophet of the Lord, for making this league with Baasha. The reprover was Hanani the seer, the father of Jehu, another prophet, whom we read of Kg1 16:1; Ch2 19:2. We observed several things amiss in Asa&#039;s treaty with Benhadad. But that which the prophet here charges upon him as the greatest fault he was guilty of in that matter is his relying on the king of Syria and not on the Lord his God, Ch2 16:7. He thought that, though God was on his side, this would not stand him in stead unless he had Benhadad on his side, that God either could not or would not help him, but he must take this indirect course to help himself. Note, God is much displeased when he is distrusted and when an arm of flesh is relied on more than his power and goodness. By putting our confidence in God we give honour to him, and therefore he thinks himself affronted if we give that honour to another. He plainly tells the king that herein he had done foolishly, Ch2 16:9. It is a foolish thing to lean on a broken reed, when we have the rock of ages to rely upon. To convince him of his folly he shows him,
1. That he acted against his experience, Ch2 16:8. He, of all men, had no reason to distrust God, who had found him such a present powerful helper, by whom he had been made to triumph over a threatening enemy, as his father before him, because he relied upon the Lord his God, Ch2 13:18; Ch2 14:11. &quot;What!&quot; said the prophet, &quot;Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubim a huge host, enough to swallow up a kingdom? And yet, because thou didst rely on the Lord, he delivered them into thy hand; and was not he sufficient to help thee against Baasha?&quot; Note, The many experiences we have had of the goodness of God to us aggravate our distrust of him. Has he not helped us in six troubles? And have we any reason to suspect him in the seventh? But see how deceitful our hearts are! We trust in God when we have nothing else to trust to, when need drives us to him; but, when we have other things to stay on, we are apt to stay too much on them and to lean on our own understanding as long as that has any thing to offer; but a believing confidence will be in God only, when a smiling world courts it most.
2. That he acted against his knowledge of God and his providence, Ch2 16:9. Asa could not be ignorant that the eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the earth, strongly to hold with those (so it may be read) whose heart is perfect towards him; that is, (1.) That God governs the world in infinite wisdom, and the creatures, and all their actions, are continually under his eye. The eye of Providence is quick-sighted - it runs; it is intent - it runs to and fro; it reaches far - through the whole earth, no corner of which is from under it, not the most dark or distant; and his eye directs his hand, and the arm of his power; for he shows himself strong. Does Satan walk to and fro in the earth? Providence runs to and fro, is never out of the way, never to seek, never at a loss. (2.) That God governs the world for the good of his people, does all in pursuance of the counsels of his love concerning their salvation, all for Jacob his servant&#039;s sake, and Israel his elect, Isa 45:4. Christ is head over all things to his church, Eph 1:22. (3.) That those whose hearts are upright with him may be sure of his protection and have all the reason in the world to depend upon it. He is able to protect them in the way of their duty (for wisdom and might are his), and he actually intends their protection. A practical disbelief of this is at the bottom of all our departures from God and double-dealing with him. Asa could not trust God and therefore made court to Benhadad.
3. That he acted against his interest. (1.) He had lost an opportunity of checking the growing greatness of the king of Syria, (Ch2 16:7): His host has escaped out of thy hand, which otherwise would have joined with Baasha&#039;s and fallen with it. (2.) He had incurred God&#039;s displeasure and henceforth must expect no peace, but the constant alarms of war, Ch2 16:9. Those that cannot find in their hearts to trust God forfeit his protection and throw themselves out of it.
II. Asa&#039;s displeasure at this reproof. Though it came from God by one that was known to be his messenger, though the reproof was just and the reasoning fair, and all intended for his good, yet he was wroth with the seer for telling him of his folly; nay, he was in a rage with him, Ch2 16:10. Is this Asa? Is this he whose heart was perfect with the Lord all his days? Well, let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. A wise man, and yet in a rage! An Israelite, and yet in a rage with a prophet! A good man, and yet impatient of reproof, and that cannot bear to be told of his faults! Lord, what is man, when God leaves him to himself? Those that idolize their own conduct cannot bear contradiction; and those that indulge a peevish passionate temper may be transported by it into impieties as well as into indecencies, and will, some time or other, fly in the face of God himself. See what gall and wormwood this root of bitterness bore. 1. In his rage he committed the prophet to the jail, put him in a prison-house, as a malefactor, in the stocks (so some read it,) or into little-ease. God&#039;s prophets meet with many that cannot bear reproof, but take it much amiss, yet they must do their duty. 2. Having proceeded thus far, he oppressed some of the people, probably such as owned the prophet in his sufferings, or were known to be his particular friends. He that abused his power for the persecuting of God&#039;s prophet was left to himself further to abuse it for the crushing of his own subjects, whereby he weakened himself and lost his interest. Most persecutors have been tyrants.
III. His sickness. Two years before he died he was diseased in his feet (Ch2 16:12), afflicted with the gout in a high degree. He had put the prophet in the stocks, and now God put him in the stocks; so his punishment answered his sin. His disease was exceedingly great; it came to the height (so some); it flew up to his head (so others), and then it was mortal. This was his affliction; but his sin was that in his disease, instead of seeking to the Lord for relief, he sought to the physicians. His making use of physicians was his duty; but trusting to them, and expecting that from them which was to be had from God only, were his sin and folly. The help of creatures must always be used with an eye to the Creator, and in dependence upon him, who makes every creature that to us which it is, and without whom the most skilful and faithful are physicians of no value. Some think that these physicians were strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, and were a sort of conjurers, to whom he applied as if there were not a God in Israel.
IV. His death and burial. His funeral had something of extraordinary solemnity in it, Ch2 16:14. They made a very magnificent burying for him. I am loth to think (as some do) that he himself ordered this funeral pomp, and that it was an instance of his vanity, that he would be buried like the Gentiles, and not after the way of the Jews. It is said indeed, He digged the sepulchre for himself, as one mindful of his grave; but I am willing to believe that this funeral pomp was rather an expression of the great respect his people retained for him, notwithstanding the failings and infirmities of his latter days. It was agreed to do him honour at his death. Note, The eminent piety and usefulness of good men ought to be remembered to their praise, though they have had their blemishes. Let their faults be buried in their graves, while their services are remembered over their graves. He that said, There is not a just man that doeth good and sinneth not, yet said also, The memory of the just is blessed; and let it be so.</p>

<p>Zophar, as the other two, here encourages Job to hope for better times if he would but come to a better temper.
I. He gives him good counsel (Job 11:13, Job 11:14), as Eliphaz did (Job 5:8), and Bildad, Job 8:5. He would have him repent and return to God. Observe the steps of that return. 1. He must look within, and get his mind changed and the tree made good. He must prepare his heart; there the work of conversion and reformation must begin. The heart that wandered from God must be reduced - that was defiled with sin and put into disorder must be cleansed and put in order again - that was wavering and unfixed must be settled and established; so the word here signifies. The heart is then prepared to seek God when it is determined and fully resolved to make a business of it and to go through with it. 2. He must look up, and stretch out his hands towards God, that is, must stir up himself to take hold on God, must pray to him with earnestness and importunity, striving in prayer, and with expectation to receive mercy and grace from him. To give the hand to the Lord signifies to yield ourselves to him and to covenant with him, Ch2 30:8. This Job must do, and, for the doing of it, must prepare his heart. Job had prayed, but Zophar would have him to pray in a better manner, not as an appellant, but as a petitioner and humble suppliant. 3. He must amend what was amiss in his own conversation, else his prayers would be ineffectual (Job 11:14): &quot;If iniquity be in thy hand (that is, if there be any sin which thou dost yet live in the practice of) put it far away, forsake it with detestation and a holy indignation, stedfastly resolving not to return to it, nor ever to have any thing more to do with it. Eze 18:31; Hos 14:9; Isa 30:22. If any of the gains of iniquity, any goods gotten by fraud or oppression, be in thy hand, make restitution thereof&quot; (as Zaccheus, Luk 19:8), &quot;and shake thy hands from holding them,&quot; Isa 33:15. The guilt of sin is not removed if the gain of sin be not restored. 4. He must do his utmost to reform his family too: &quot;Let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles; let not thy house harbour or shelter any wicked persons, any wicked practices, or any wealth gotten by wickedness.&quot; He suspected that Job&#039;s great household had been ill-governed, and that, where there were many, there were many wicked, and the ruin of his family was the punishment of the wickedness of it; and therefore, if he expected God should return to him, he must reform what was amiss there, and, though wickedness might come into his tabernacles, he must not suffer it to dwell there, Psa 101:3, etc.
II. He assures him of comfort if he took this counsel, Job 11:15, etc. If he would repent and reform, he should, without doubt, be easy and happy, and all would be well. Perhaps Zophar might insinuate that, unless God did speedily make such a change as this in his condition, he and his friends would be confirmed in their opinion of him as a hypocrite and a dissembler with God. A great truth, however, is conveyed, That, the work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever, Isa 32:17. Those that sincerely turn to God may expect,
1. A holy confidence towards God: &quot;Then shalt thou lift up thy face towards heaven without spot; thou mayest come boldly to the throne of grace, and not with that terror and amazement expressed,&quot; Job 9:34. If our hearts condemn us not for hypocrisy and impenitency, then have we confidence in our approaches to God and expectations from him, Jo1 3:21. If we are looked upon in the face of the anointed, our faces, that were dejected, may be lifted up - that were polluted, being washed with the blood of Christ, may be lifted up without spot. We may draw near in full assurance of faith when we are sprinkled from an evil conscience, Heb 10:22. Some understand this of the clearing up of his credit before men, Psa 37:6. If we make our peace with God, we may with cheerfulness look our friends in the face.
2. A holy composedness in themselves: Thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear, not be afraid of evil tidings, thy heart being fixed, Psa 112:7. Job was now full of confusion (Job 10:15), while he looked upon God as his enemy and quarrelled with him; but Zophar assures him that, if he would submit and humble himself, his mind would be composed, and he would be freed from those frightful apprehensions he had of God, which put him into such an agitation. The less we are frightened the more we are fixed, and consequently the more fit we are for our services and for our sufferings.
3. A comfortable reflection upon their past troubles (Job 11:16): &quot;Thou shalt forget thy misery, as the mother forgets her travailing pains, for joy that the child is born; thou shalt be perfectly freed from the impressions it makes upon thee, and thou shalt remember it as waters that pass away, or are poured out of a vessel, which leave no taste or tincture behind them, as other liquors do. The wounds of thy present affliction shall be perfectly healed, not only without a remaining scar, but without a remaining pain.&quot; Job had endeavoured to forget his complaint (Job 9:27), but found he could not; his soul had still in remembrance the wormwood and the gall: but here Zophar puts him in a way to forget it; let him by faith and prayer bring his griefs and cares to God, an leave them with him, and then he shall forget them. Where sin sits heavily affliction sits lightly. If we duly remember our sins, we shall, in comparison with them, forget our misery, much more if we obtain the comfort of a sealed pardon and a settled peace. He whose iniquity is forgiven shall not say, I am sick, but shall forget his sickness, Isa 33:24.
4. A comfortable prospect of their future peace. This Zophar here thinks to please Job with, in answer to the many despairing expressions he had used, as if it were to no purpose for him to hope ever to see good days again in this world: &quot;Yea, but thou mayest&quot; (says Zophar) &quot;and good nights too.&quot; A blessed change he here puts him in hopes of.
(1.) That though now his light was eclipsed it should shine out again, and more brightly than ever (Job 11:17), - that even his setting sun should out-shine his noon-day sun, and his evening be fair and clear as the morning, in respect both of honour and pleasure. - that his light should shine out of obscurity (Isa 58:10), and the thick and dark cloud, from behind which his sun should break forth, would serve as a foil to its lustre, - that it should shine even in old age, and those evil days should be good days to him. Note, Those that truly turn to God then begin to shine forth; their path is as the shining light which increases, the period of their day will be the perfection of it, and their evening to this world will be their morning to a better.
(2.) That, though now he was in a continual fear and terror, he should live in a holy rest and security, and find himself continually safe and easy (Job 11:18): Thou shalt be secure, because there is hope. Note, Those who have a good hope, through grace, in God, and of heaven, are certainly safe, and have reason to be secure, how difficult soever the times are through which they pass in this world. He that walks uprightly may thus walk surely, because, though there are trouble and danger, yet there is hope that all will be well at last. Hope is an anchor of the soul, Heb 6:19. &quot;Thou shalt dig about thee,&quot; that is, &quot;Thou shalt be as safe as an army in its entrenchments.&quot; Those that submit to God&#039;s government shall be taken under his protection, and then they are safe both day and night. [1.] By day, when they employ themselves abroad: &quot;Thou shalt dig in safety, thou and thy servants for thee, and not be again set upon by the plunderers, who fell upon thy servants at plough,&quot; Job 1:14, Job 1:15. It is no part of the promised prosperity that he should live in idleness, but that he should have a calling and follow it, and, when he was about the business of it, should be under the divine protection. Thou shalt dig and be safe, not rob and be safe, revel and be safe. The way of duty is the way of safety. [2.] By night, when they repose themselves at home: Thou shalt take thy rest (and the sleep of the labouring man is sweet) in safety, notwithstanding the dangers of the darkness. The pillar of cloud by day shall be a pillar of fire by night: &quot;Thou shalt lie down (Job 11:19), not forced to wander where there is no place to lay thy head on, nor forced to watch and sit up in expectation of assaults; but thou shalt go to bed at bedtime, and not only shall non hurt thee, but none shall make thee afraid nor so much as give thee an alarm.&quot; Note, It is a great mercy to have quiet nights and undisturbed sleeps; those say so that are within the hearing of the noise of war. And the way to be quiet is to seek unto God and keep ourselves in his love. Nothing needs make those afraid who return to God as their rest and take him for their habitation.
(3.) That, though now he was slighted, yet he should be courted: &quot;Many shall make suit to thee, and think it their interest to secure thy friendship.&quot; Suit is made to those that are eminently wise or reputed to be so, that are very rich or in power. Zophar knew Job so well that he foresaw that, how low soever this present ebb was, if once the tide turned, it would flow as high as ever; and he would be again the darling of his country. Those that rightly make suit to God will probably see the day when others will make suit to them, as the foolish virgins to the wise, Give us of your oil.
III. Zophar concludes with a brief account of the doom of wicked people (Job 11:20): But the eyes of the wicked shall fail. It should seem, he suspected that Job would not take his counsel, and here tells him what would then come of it, setting death as well as life before him. See what will become of those who persist in their wickedness, and will not be reformed. 1. They shall not reach the good they flatter themselves with the hopes of in this world and in the other. Disappointments will be their doom, their shame, their endless torment. Their eyes shall fail with expecting that which will never come. When a wicked man dies his expectation perishes, Pro 11:7. Their hope shall be as a puff of breath (margin), vanished and gone past recall. Or their hope will perish and expire as a man does when he gives up the ghost; it will fail them when they have most need of it and when they expected the accomplishment of it; it will die away, and leave them in utter confusion. 2. They shall not avoid the evil which sometimes they frighten themselves with the apprehensions of. They shall not escape the execution of the sentence passed upon them, can neither out-brave it nor outrun it. Those that will not fly to God will find it in vain to think of flying from him.</p>

<p>Bildad had very disingenuously perverted Job&#039;s complaints by making them the description of the miserable condition of a wicked man; and yet he repeats them here, to move their pity, and to work upon their good nature, if they had any left in them.
I. He complains of the tokens of God&#039;s displeasure which he was under, and which infused the wormwood and gall into the affliction and misery. How doleful are the accents of his complaints! &quot;He hath kindled his wrath against me, which flames and terrifies me, which burns and pains me,&quot; Job 19:11. What is the fire of hell but the wrath of God? Seared consciences will feel it hereafter, but do not fear it now. Enlightened consciences fear it now, but shall not feel it hereafter. Job&#039;s present apprehension was that God counted him as one of his enemies; and yet, at the same time, God loved him, and gloried in him, as his faithful friend. It is a gross mistake, but a very common one, to think that whom God afflicts he treats as his enemies; whereas, on the contrary, as many as he loves he rebukes and chastens; it is the discipline of his sons. Which way soever Job looked he thought he saw the tokens of God&#039;s displeasure against him. 1. Did he look back upon his former prosperity? He saw God&#039;s hand putting an end to that (Job 19:9): &quot;He has stripped me of my glory, my wealth, honour, power, and all the opportunity I had of doing good. My children were my glory, but I have lost them; and whatever was a crown to my head he has taken it from me, and has laid all my honour in the dust.&quot; See the vanity of worldly glory: it is what we may be soon stripped of; and, whatever strips us, we must see and own God&#039;s hand in it and comply with his design. 2. Did he look down upon his present troubles? He saw God giving them their commission, and their orders to attack him. They are his troops, that act by his direction, which encamp against me, Job 19:12. It did not so much trouble him that his miseries came upon him in troops as that they were God&#039;s troops, in whom it seemed as if God fought against him and intended his destruction. God&#039;s troops encamped around his tabernacle, as soldiers lay siege to a strong city, cutting off all provisions from being brought into it and battering it continually; thus was Job&#039;s tabernacle besieged. Time was when God&#039;s hosts encamped round him for safety: Hast thou not made a hedge about him? Now, on the contrary, they surrounded him, to his terror, and destroyed him on every side, Job 19:10. 3. Did he look forward for deliverance? He saw the hand of God cutting off all hopes of that (Job 19:8): &quot;He hath fenced up my way, that I cannot pass. I have now no way left to help myself, either to extricate myself out of my troubles or to ease myself under them. Would I make any motion, take any steps towards deliverance? I find my way hedged up; I cannot do what I would; nay, if I would please myself with the prospect of a deliverance hereafter, I cannot do it; it is not only out of my reach, but out of my sight: God hath set darkness in my paths, and there is none to tell me how long,&quot; Psa 74:9. He concludes (Job 19:10), &quot;I am gone, quite lost and undone for this world; my hope hath he removed like a tree cut down, or plucked up by the roots, which will never grow again.&quot; Hope in this life is a perishing thing, but the hope of good men, when it is cut off from this world, is but removed like a tree, transplanted from this nursery to the garden of the Lord. We shall have no reason to complain if God thus remove our hopes from the sand to the rock, from things temporal to things eternal.
II. He complains of the unkindness of his relations and of all his old acquaintance. In this also he owns the hand of God (Job 19:13): He has put my brethren far from me, that is, &quot;He has laid those afflictions upon me which frighten them from me, and make them stand aloof from my sores.&quot; As it was their sin God was not the author of it; it is Satan that alienates men&#039;s minds from their brethren in affliction. But, as it was Job&#039;s trouble, God ordered it for the completing of his trial. As we must eye the hand of God in all the injuries we receive from our enemies (&quot;the Lord has bidden Shimei curse David&quot;), so also in all the slights and unkindnesses we receive from our friends, which will help us to bear them the more patiently. Every creature is that to us (kind or unkind, comfortable or uncomfortable) which God makes it to be. Yet this does not excuse Job&#039;s relations and friends from the guilt of horrid ingratitude and injustice to him, which he had reason to complain of; few could have borne it so well as he did. He takes notice of the unkindness, 1. Of his kindred and acquaintance, his neighbours, and such as he had formerly been familiar with, who were bound by all the laws of friendship and civility to concern themselves for him, to visit him, to enquire after him, and to be ready to do him all the good offices that lay in their power; yet these were estranged from him, Job 19:13. They took no more care about him than if he had been a stranger whom they never knew. His kinsfolk, who claimed relation to him when he was in prosperity, now failed him; they came short of their former professions of friendship to him and his present expectations of kindness from them. Even his familiar friends, whom he was mindful of, had now forgotten him, had forgotten both his former friendliness to them and his present miseries: they had heard of his troubles, and designed him a visit; but truly they forgot it, so little affected were they with it. Nay, his inward friends, the men of his secret, whom he was most intimate with and laid in his bosom, not only forgot him, but abhorred him, kept as far off from him as they could, because he was poor and could not entertain them as he used to do, and because he was sore and a loathsome spectacle. Those whom he loved, and who therefore were worse than publicans if they did not love him now that he was in distress, not only turned from him, but were turned against him, and did all they could to make him odious, so to justify themselves in being so strange to him, Job 19:19. So uncertain is the friendship of men; but, if God be our friend, he will not fail us in a time of need. But let none that pretend either to humanity or Christianity ever use their friends as Job&#039;s friends used him: adversity is the proof of friendship. 2. Of his domestics and family relations. Sometimes indeed we find that, beyond our expectation, there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother; but the master of a family ordinarily expects to be attended on and taken care of by those of his family, even when, through weakness of body or mind, he has become despicable to others. But poor Job was misused by his own family, and some of his worst foes were those of his own house. He mentions not his children; they were all dead, and we may suppose that the unkindness of his surviving relations made him lament the death of his children so much the more: &quot;If they had been alive,&quot; would he think, &quot;I should have had comfort in them.&quot; As for those that were now about him, (1.) His own servants slighted him. His maids did not attend him in his illness, but counted him for a stranger and an alien, Job 19:15. His other servants never heeded him; if he called to them they would not come at his call, but pretended that they did not hear him. If he asked them a question, they would not vouchsafe to give him an answer, Job 19:16. Job had been a good master to them, and did not despise their cause when they pleaded with him (Job 31:13), and yet they were rude to him now, and despised his cause when he pleaded with them. We must not think it strange if we receive evil at the hand of those from whom we have deserved well. Though he was now sickly, yet he was not cross with his servants, and imperious, as is too common, but he entreated his servants with his mouth, when he had authority to command; and yet they would not be civil to him, neither kind nor just. Note, Those that are sick and in sorrow are apt to take things ill, and be jealous of a slight, and to lay to heart the least unkindness done to them: when Job was in affliction even his servants&#039; neglect of him troubled him. (2.) But, one would think, when all forsook him, the wife of his bosom should have been tender of him: no, because he would not curse God and die, as she persuaded him, his breath was strange to her too; she did not care for coming near him, nor took any notice of what he said, Job 19:17. Though he spoke to her, not with the authority, but with the tenderness of a husband, did not command, but entreated her by that conjugal love which their children were the pledges of, yet she regarded him not. Some read it, &quot;Though I lamented, or bemoaned myself, for the children,&quot; that is, &quot;for the death of the children of my own body,&quot; an affliction in which she was equally concerned with him. Now, it appeared, the devil spared her to him, not only to be his tempter, but to be his tormentor. By what she said to him at first, Curse God and die, it appeared that she had little religion in her; and what can one expect that is kind and good from those that have not the fear of God before their eyes and are not governed by conscience? (3.) Even the little children who were born in his house, the children of his own servants, who were his servants by birth, despised him, and spoke against him (Job 19:18); though he arose in civility to speak friendly to them, or with authority to check them, they let him know that they neither feared him nor loved him.
III. He complains of the decay of his body; all the beauty and strength of that were gone. When those about him slighted him, if he had been in health, and at ease, he might have enjoyed himself. But he could take as little pleasure in himself as others took in him (Job 19:20): My bone cleaves now to my skin, as formerly it did to my flesh; it was this that filled him with wrinkles (Job 16:8); he was a perfect skeleton, nothing but skin and bones. Nay, his skin too was almost gone, little remained unbroken but the skin of his teeth, his gums and perhaps his lips; all the rest was fetched off by his sore boils. See what little reason we have to indulge the body, which, after all our care, may be thus consumed by the diseases which it has in itself the seeds of.
IV. Upon all these accounts he recommends himself to the compassion of his friends, and justly blames their harshness with him. From this representation of his deplorable case, it was easy to infer, 1. That they ought to pity him, Job 19:21. This he begs in the most moving melting language that could be, enough (one would think) to break a heart of stone: &quot;Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O you my friends! if you will do nothing else for me, be sorry for me, and show some concern for me; have pity upon me, for the hand of God hath touched me. My case is sad indeed, for I have fallen into the hands of the living God, my spirit is touched with the sense of his wrath, a calamity of all other the most piteous.&quot; Note, It becomes friends to pity one another when they are in trouble, and not to shut up the bowels of compassion. 2. That, however, they ought not to persecute him; if they would not ease his affliction by their pity, yet they must not be so barbarous as to add to it by their censures and reproaches (Job 19:22): &quot;Why do you persecute me as God? Surely his rebukes are enough for one man to bear; you need not add your wormwood and gall to the cup of affliction he puts into my hand, it is bitter enough without that: God has a sovereign power over me, and may do what he pleases with me; but do you think that you may do so too?&quot; No, we must aim to be like the Most Holy and the Most Merciful, but not like the Most High and Most Mighty. God gives not account of any of his matters, but we must give account of ours. If they did delight in his calamity, let them be satisfied with his flesh, which was wasted and gone, but let them not, as if that were too little, wound his spirit, and ruin his good name. Great tenderness is due to those that are in affliction, especially to those that are troubled in mind.</p>

<p>Job is confident that he has wrong done him by his friends, and therefore, ill as he is, he will not give up the cause, nor let them have the last word. Here,
I. He justifies his own resentments of his trouble (Job 23:2): Even to day, I own, my complaint is bitter; for the affliction, the cause of the complaint, is so. There are wormwood and gall in the affliction and misery; my soul has them still in remembrance and is embittered by them, Lam 3:19, Lam 3:20. Even to day is my complaint counted rebellion (so some read it); his friends construed the innocent expressions of his grief into reflections upon God and his providence, and called them rebellion. &quot;But,&quot; says he, &quot;I do not complain more than there is cause; for my stroke is heavier than my groaning. Even today, after all you have said to convince and comfort me, still the pains of my body and the wounds of my spirit are such that I have reason enough for my complaints, if they were more bitter than they are.&quot; We wrong God if our groaning be heavier than our stroke, like froward children, who, when they cry for nothing, have justly something given them to cry for; but we do not wrong ourselves though our stroke be heavier than our groaning, for little said is soon amended.
II. He appeals from the censures of his friends to the just judgment of God; and this he thought was an evidence for him that he was not a hypocrite, for then he durst not have made such an appeal as this. St Paul comforted himself in this, that he that judged him was the Lord, and therefore he valued not man&#039;s judgment (Co1 4:3, Co1 4:4), but he was willing to wait till the appointed day of decision came; whereas Job is impatient, and passionately wishes to have the judgment-day anticipated, and to have his cause tried quickly, as it were, by a special commission. The apostle found it necessary to press it much upon suffering Christians patiently to expect the Judge&#039;s coming, Jam 5:7-9.
1. He is so sure of the equity of God&#039;s tribunal that he longs to appear before it (Job 23:3): O that I knew where I might find him! This may properly express the pious breathings of a soul convinced that it has by sin lost God and is undone for ever if it recover not its interest in his favour. &quot;O that I knew how I might recover his favour! How I might come into his covenant and communion with him!&quot; Mic 6:6, Mic 6:7. It is the cry of a poor deserted soul. &quot;Saw you him whom my soul loveth? O that I knew where I might find him! O that he who has laid open the way to himself would direct me into it and lead me in it!&quot; But Job here seems to complain too boldly that his friends wronged him and he knew not which way to apply himself to God to have justice done him, else he would go even to his seat, to demand it. A patient waiting for death and judgment is our wisdom and duty, and, if we duly consider things, that cannot be without a holy fear and trembling; but a passionate wishing for death or judgment, without any such fear and trembling, is our sin and folly, and ill becomes us. Do we know what death and judgment are, and are we so very ready for them, that we need not time to get readier? Woe to those that thus, in a heat, desire the day of the Lord, Amo 5:18.
2. He is so sure of the goodness of his own cause that he longs to be opening it at God&#039;s bar (Job 23:4): &quot;I would order my cause before him, and set it in a true light. I would produce the evidences of my sincerity in a proper method, and would fill my mouth with arguments to prove it.&quot; We may apply this to the duty of prayer, in which we have boldness to enter into the holiest and to come even to the footstool of the throne of grace. We have not only liberty of access, but liberty of speech. We have leave, (1.) To be particular in our requests, to order our cause before God, to speak the whole matter, to lay before him all our grievances, in what method we think most proper; we durst not be so free with earthly princes as a humble holy soul may be with God. (2.) To be importunate in our requests. We are allowed, not only to pray, but to plead, not only to ask, but to argue; nay, to fill our mouths with arguments, not to move God (he is perfectly apprized of the merits of the cause without our showing), but to move ourselves, to excite our fervency and encourage our faith in prayer.
3. He is so sure of a sentence in favour of him that he even longed to hear it (Job 23:5): &quot;I would know the words which he would answer me,&quot; that is, &quot;I would gladly hear what God will say to this matter in dispute between you and me, and will entirely acquiesce in his judgment.&quot; This becomes us, in all controversies; let the word of God determine them; let us know what he answers, and understand what he says. Job knew well enough what his friends would answer him; they would condemn him, and run him down. &quot;But&quot; (says he) &quot;I would fain know what God would answer me; for I am sure his judgment is according to truth, which theirs is not. I cannot understand them; they talk so little to the purpose. But what he says I should understand and therefore be fully satisfied in.&quot;
III. He comforts himself with the hope that God would deal favourably with him in this matter, Job 23:6, Job 23:7. Note, It is of great use to us, in every thing wherein we have to do with God, to keep up good thoughts of him. He believes, 1. That God would not overpower him, that he would not deal with him either by absolute sovereignty or in strict justice, not with a high hand, nor with a strong hand: Will he plead against me with his great power? No. Job&#039;s friends pleaded against him with all the power they had; but will God do so? No; his power is all just and holy, whatever men&#039;s is. Against those that are obstinate in their unbelief and impenitency God will plead with his great power; their destruction will come from the glory of his power. But with his own people, that love him and trust in him, he will deal in tender compassion. 2. That, on the contrary, he would empower him to plead his own cause before God: &quot;He would put strength in me, to support me and bear me up, in maintaining my integrity.&quot; Note, The same power that is engaged against proud sinners is engaged for humble saints, who prevail with God by strength derived from him, as Jacob did, Hos 12:3. See Psa 68:35. 3. That the issue would certainly be comfortable, Job 23:7. There, in the court of heaven, when the final sentence is to be given, the righteous might dispute with him and come off in his righteousness. Now, even the upright are often chastened of the Lord, and they cannot dispute against it; integrity itself is no fence either against calamity or calumny; but in that day they shall not be condemned with the world, though God may afflict by prerogative. Then you shall discern between the righteous and the wicked (Mal 3:18), so vast will be the difference between them in their everlasting state; whereas now we can scarcely distinguish them, so little is the difference between them as to their outward condition, for all things come alike to all. Then, when the final doom is given, &quot;I shall be delivered for ever from my Judge,&quot; that is, &quot;I shall be saved from the unjust censures of my friends and from that divine sentence which is now so much a terror to me.&quot; Those that are delivered up to God as their owner and ruler shall be for ever delivered from him as their judge and avenger; and there is no flying from his justice but by flying to his mercy.</p>

<p>These verses speak the language of a heart truly humbled under humbling providences, of a broken and contrite spirit under great afflictions, sent on purpose to awaken conscience and mortify corruption. Those heap up wrath who cry not when God binds them; but those are getting ready for mercy who, under God&#039;s rebukes, sow in tears, as David does here. Let us observe here,
I. The representation he makes to God of his grievances. He pours out his complaint before him. Whither else should a child go with his complaints, but to his father? 1. He complains of bodily pain and sickness (Psa 6:2): My bones are vexed. His bones and his flesh, like Job&#039;s, were touched. Though David was a king, yet he was sick and pained; his imperial crown could not keep his head from aching. Great men are men, and subject to the common calamities of human life. Though David was a stout man, a man of war from his youth, yet this could not secure him from distempers, which will soon make even the strong men to bow themselves. Though David was a good man, yet neither could his goodness keep him in health. Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. Let this help to reconcile us to pain and sickness, that it has been the lot of some of the best saints, and that we are directed and encouraged by their example to show before God our trouble in that case, who is for the body, and takes cognizance of its ailments. 2. He complains of inward trouble: My soul is also sorely vexed; and that is much more grievous than the vexation of the bones. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, if that be in good plight; but, if that be wounded, the grievance is intolerable. David&#039;s sickness brought his sin to his remembrance, and he looked upon it as a token of God&#039;s displeasure against him; that was the vexation of his soul; that made him cry, I am weak, heal me. It is a sad thing for a man to have his bones and his soul vexed at the same time; but this has been sometimes the lot of God&#039;s own people: nay, and this completed his complicated trouble, that it was continued upon him a great while, which is here intimated in that expostulation (Psa 6:3), Thou, O Lord! how long? To the living God we must, at such a time, address ourselves, who is the only physician both of body and mind, and not to the Assyrians, not to the god of Ekron.
II. The impression which his troubles made upon him. They lay very heavily; he groaned till he was weary, wept till he made his bed to swim, and watered his couch (Psa 6:6), wept till he had almost wept his eyes out (Psa 6:7): My eye is consumed because of grief. David had more courage and consideration than to mourn thus for any outward affliction; but, when sin sat heavily upon his conscience and he was made to possess his iniquities, when his soul was wounded with the sense of God&#039;s wrath and his withdrawings from him, then he thus grieves and mourns in secret, and even his soul refuses to be comforted. This not only kept his eyes waking, but kept his eyes weeping. Note, 1. It has often been the lot of the best of men to be men of sorrows; our Lord Jesus himself was so. Our way lies through a vale of tears, and we must accommodate ourselves to the temper of the climate. 2. It well becomes the greatest spirits to be tender, and to relent, under the tokens of God&#039;s displeasure. David, who could face Goliath himself and many another threatening enemy with an undaunted bravery, yet melts into tears at the remembrance of sin and under the apprehensions of divine wrath; and it was no diminution at all to his character to do so. 3. True penitents weep in their retirements. The Pharisees disguised their faces, that they might appear unto men to mourn; but David mourned in the night upon the bed where he lay communing with his own heart, and no eye was a witness to his grief, but the eye of him who is all eye. Peter went out, covered his face, and wept. 4. Sorrow for sin ought to be great sorrow; so David&#039;s was; he wept so bitterly, so abundantly, that he watered his couch. 5. The triumphs of wicked men in the sorrows of the saints add very much to their grief. David&#039;s eye waxed old because of his enemies, who rejoiced in his afflictions and put bad constructions upon his tears. In this great sorrow David was a type of Christ, who often wept, and who cried out, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, Heb 5:7.
III. The petitions which he offers up to God in this sorrowful and distressed state. 1. That which he dreads as the greatest evil is the anger of God. This was the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery; it was the infusion of this that made it indeed a bitter cup; and therefore he prays (Psa 6:1), O Lord! rebuke me not in thy anger, though I have deserved it, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. He does not pray, &quot;Lord, rebuke me not; Lord, chasten me not;&quot; for, as many as God loves he rebukes and chastens, as a father the son in whom he delights. He can bear the rebuke and chastening well enough if God, at the same time, lift up the light of his countenance upon him and by his Spirit make him to hear the joy and gladness of his loving-kindness; the affliction of his body will be tolerable if he have but comfort in his soul. No matter though sickness make his bones ache, if God&#039;s wrath do not make his heart ache; therefore his prayer is, &quot;Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath; let me not lie under the impressions of that, for that will sink me.&quot; Herein David was a type of Christ, whose sorest complaint, in his sufferings, was of the trouble of his soul and of the suspension of his Father&#039;s smiles. He never so much as whispered a complaint of the rage of his enemies - &quot;Why do they crucify me?&quot; or the unkindness of his friends - &quot;Why do they desert me?&quot; But he cried with a loud voice, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Let us thus deprecate the wrath of God more than any outward trouble whatsoever and always beware of treasuring up wrath against a day of affliction. 2. That which he desires as the greatest good, and which would be to him the restoration of all good, is the favour and friendship of God. He prays, (1.) That God would pity him and look upon him with compassion. He thinks himself very miserable, and misery is the proper object of mercy. Hence he prays, &quot;Have mercy upon me, O Lord! in wrath remember mercy, and deal not with me in strict justice.&quot; (2.) That God would pardon his sins; for that is the proper act of mercy, and is often chiefly intended in that petition, Have mercy upon me. (3.) That God would put forth his power for his relief: &quot;Lord, heal me (Psa 6:2), save me (Psa 6:4), speak the word, and I shall be whole, and all will be well.&quot; (4.) That he would be at peace with him: &quot;Return, O Lord! receive me into thy favour again, and be reconciled to me. Thou hast seemed to depart from me and neglect me, nay, to set thyself at a distance, as one angry; but now, Lord, return and show thyself nigh to me.&quot; (5.) That he would especially preserve the inward man and the interests of that, whatever might become of the body: &quot;O Lord! deliver my soul from sinning, from sinking, from perishing for ever.&quot; It is an unspeakable privilege that we have a God to go to in our afflictions, and it is our duty to go to him, and thus to wrestle with him, and we shall not seek in vain.
IV. The pleas with which he enforces his petitions, not to move God (he knows our cause and the true merits of it better than we can state them), but to move himself. 1. He pleads God&#039;s mercy; and thence we take some of our best encouragements in prayer: Save me, for thy mercies&#039; sake. 3. He pleads God&#039;s glory (Psa 6:5): &quot;For in death there is no remembrance of thee. Lord, if thou deliver me and comfort me, I will not only give thee thanks for my deliverance, and stir up others to join with me in these thanksgivings, but I will spend the new life thou shalt entrust me with in thy service and to thy glory, and all the remainder of my days I will preserve a grateful remembrance of thy favours to me, and be quickened thereby in all instances of service to thee; but, if I die, I shall be cut short of that opportunity of honouring thee and doing good to others, for in the grave who will give the thanks?&quot; Not but that separate souls live and act, and the souls of the faithful joyfully remember God and give thanks to him. But, (1.) In the second death (which perhaps David, being now troubled in soul under the wrath of God, had some dreadful apprehensions of) there is no pleasing remembrance of God; devils and damned spirits blaspheme him and do not praise him. &quot;Lord, let me not lie always under this wrath, for that is sheol, it is hell itself, and lays me under an everlasting disability to praise thee.&quot; Those that sincerely seek God&#039;s glory, and desire and delight to praise him, may pray in faith, &quot;Lord, send me not to that dreadful place, where there is no devout remembrance of thee, nor are any thanks given to thee.&quot; (2.) Even the death of the body puts an end to our opportunity and capacity of glorifying God in this world, and serving the interests of his kingdom among men by opposing the powers of darkness and bringing many on this earth to know God and devote themselves to him. Some have maintained that the joys of the saints in heaven are more desirable, infinitely more so, than the comforts of saints on earth; yet the services of saints on earth, especially such eminent ones as David was, are more laudable, and redound more to the glory of the divine grace, than the services of the saints in heaven, who are not employed in maintaining the war against sin and Satan, nor in edifying the body of Christ. Courtiers in the royal presence are most happy, but soldiers in the field are more useful; and therefore we may, with good reason, pray that if it be the will of God, and he has any further work for us or our friends to do in this world, he will yet spare us, or them, to serve him. To depart and be with Christ is most happy for the saints themselves; but for them to abide in the flesh is more profitable for the church. This David had an eye to when he pleaded this, In the grave who shall give thee thanks? Psa 30:9; Psa 88:10; Psa 115:17; Isa 38:18. And this Christ had an eye to when he said, I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world.
We should sing these verses with a deep sense of the terrors of God&#039;s wrath, which we should therefore dread and deprecate above any thing; and with thankfulness if this be not our condition, and compassion to those who are thus afflicted: if we be thus troubled, let it comfort us that our case is not without precedent, nor, if we humble ourselves and pray, as David did, shall it be long without redress.</p>

<p>In these verses we have Christ suffering and Christ praying, by which we are directed to look for crosses and to look up to God under them.
I. Here is Christ suffering. David indeed was often in trouble, and beset with enemies; but many of the particulars here specified are such as were never true of David, and therefore must be appropriated to Christ in the depth of his humiliation.
1. He is here deserted by his friends: Trouble and distress are near, and there is none to help, none to uphold, Psa 22:11. He trod the wine-press alone; for all his disciples forsook him and fled. It is God&#039;s honour to help when all other helps and succours fail.
2. He is here insulted and surrounded by his enemies, such as were of a higher rank, who for their strength and fury, are compared to bulls, strong bulls of Bashan (Psa 22:12), fat and fed to the full, haughty and sour; such were the chief priests and elders that persecuted Christ; and others of a lower rank, who are compared to dogs (Psa 22:16), filthy and greedy, and unwearied in running him down. There was an assembly of the wicked plotting against him (Psa 22:16); for the chief priests sat in council, to consult of ways and means to take Christ. These enemies were numerous and unanimous: &quot;Many, and those of different and clashing interests among themselves, as Herod and Pilate, have agreed to compass me. They have carried their plot far, and seem to have gained their point, for they have beset me round, Psa 22:12. They have enclosed me, Psa 22:16. They are formidable and threatening (Psa 22:13): They gaped upon me with their mouths, to show me that they would swallow me up; and this with as much strength and fierceness as a roaring ravening lion leaps upon his prey.&quot;
3. He is here crucified. The very manner of his death is described, though never in use among the Jews: They pierced my hands and my feet (Psa 22:16), which were nailed to the accursed tree, and the whole body left so to hang, the effect of which must needs be the most exquisite pain and torture. There is no one passage in all the Old Testament which the Jews have so industriously corrupted as this, because it is such an eminent prediction of the death of Christ and was so exactly fulfilled.
4. He is here dying (Psa 22:14, Psa 22:15), dying in pain and anguish, because he was to satisfy for sin, which brought in pain, and for which we must otherwise have lain in everlasting anguish. Here is, (1.) The dissolution of the whole frame of his body: I am poured out like water, weak as water, and yielding to the power of death, emptying himself of all the supports of his human nature. (2.) The dislocation of his bones. Care was taken that not one of them should be broken (Joh 19:36), but they were all out of joint by the violent stretching of his body upon the cross as upon a rack. Or it may denote the fear that seized him in his agony in the garden, when he began to be sore amazed, the effect of which perhaps was (as sometimes it has been of great fear, Dan 5:6), that the joints of his loins were loosed and his knees smote one against another. His bones were put out of joint that he might put the whole creation into joint again, which sin had put out of joint, and might make our broken bones to rejoice. (3.) The colliquation of his spirits: My heart is like wax, melted to receive the impressions of God&#039;s wrath against the sins he undertook to satisfy for, melting away like the vitals of a dying man; and, as this satisfied for the hardness of our hearts, so the consideration of it should help to soften them. When Job speaks of his inward trouble he says, The Almighty makes my heart soft, Job 23:16, and see Psa 58:2. (4.) The failing of his natural force: My strength is dried up; so that he became parched and brittle like a potsherd, the radical moisture being wasted by the fire of divine wrath preying upon his spirits. Who then can stand before God&#039;s anger? Or who knows the power of it? If this was done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? (5.) The clamminess of his mouth, a usual symptom of approaching death: My tongue cleaveth to my jaws; this was fulfilled both in his thirst upon the cross (Joh 19:28) and in his silence under his sufferings; for, as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth, nor objected against any thing done to him. (6.) His giving up the ghost: &quot;Thou hast brought me to the dust of death; I am just ready to drop into the grave;&quot; for nothing less would satisfy divine justice. The life of the sinner was forfeited, and therefore the life of the sacrifice must be the ransom for it. The sentence of death passed upon Adam was thus expressed: Unto dust thou shalt return. And therefore Christ, having an eye to that sentence in his obedience to death, here uses a similar expression: Thou hast brought me to the dust of death.
5. He was stripped. The shame of nakedness was the immediate consequence of sin; and therefore our Lord Jesus was stripped of his clothes, when he was crucified, that he might clothe us with the robe of his righteousness, and that the shame of our nakedness might not appear. Now here we are told, (1.) How his body looked when it was thus stripped: I may tell all my bones, Psa 22:17. His blessed body was lean and emaciated with labour, grief, and fasting, during the whole course of his ministry, which made him look as if he was nearly 50 years old when he was yet but 33, as we find, Joh 8:57. His wrinkles now witnessed for him that he was far from being what was called, a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber. Or his bones might be numbered, because his body was distended upon the cross, which made it easy to count his ribs. They look and stare upon me, that is, my bones do, being distorted, and having no flesh to cover them, as Job says (Job 16:8), My leanness, rising up in me, beareth witness to my face. Or &quot;the standers by, the passers by, are amazed to see my bones start out thus; and, instead of pitying me, are pleased even with such a rueful spectacle.&quot; (2.) What they did with his clothes, which they took from him (Psa 22:18): They parted my garments among them, to every soldier a part, and upon my vesture, the seamless coat, do they cast lots. This very circumstance was exactly fulfilled, Joh 19:23, Joh 19:24. And though it was no great instance of Christ&#039;s suffering, yet it is a great instance of the fulfilling of the scripture in him. Thus it was written, and therefore thus it behoved Christ to suffer. Let this therefore confirm our faith in him as the true Messiah, and inflame our love to him as the best of friends, who loved us and suffered all this for us.
II. Here is Christ praying, and with that supporting himself under the burden of his sufferings. Christ, in his agony, prayed earnestly, prayed that the cup might pass from him. When the prince of this world with his terrors set upon him, gaped upon him as a roaring lion, he fell upon the ground and prayed. And of that David&#039;s praying here was a type. He calls God his strength, Psa 22:19. When we cannot rejoice in God as our song, yet let us stay ourselves upon him as out strength, and take the comfort of spiritual supports when we cannot come at spiritual delights. He prays, 1. That God would be with him, and not set himself at a distance from him: Be not thou far from me (Psa 22:11), and again, Psa 22:19. &quot;Whoever stands aloof from my sore, Lord, do not thou.&quot; The nearness of trouble should quicken us to draw near to God and then we may hope that he will draw near to us. 2. That he would help him and make haste to help him, help him to bear up under his troubles, that he might not fail nor be discouraged, that he might neither shrink from his undertaking no sink under it. And the Father heard him in that he feared (Heb 5:7) and enabled him to go through with his work. 3. That he would deliver him and save him, Psa 22:20, Psa 22:21. (1.) Observe what the jewel is which he is in care for, &quot;The safety of my soul, my darling; let that be redeemed from the power of the grave, Psa 49:15. Father, into thy hands I commit that, to be conveyed safely to paradise.&quot; The psalmist here calls his soul his darling, his only one (so the word is): &quot;My soul is my only one. I have but one soul to take care of, and therefore the greater is my shame if I neglect it and the greater will the loss be if I let it perish. Being my only one, it ought to be my darling, for the eternal welfare of which I ought to be deeply concerned. I do not use my soul as my darling, unless I take care to preserve it from every thing that would hurt it and to provide all necessaries for it, and be entirely tender of its welfare.&quot; (2.) Observe what the danger is from which he prays to be delivered, from the sword, the flaming sword of divine wrath, which turns every way. This he dreaded more than any thing, Gen 3:24. God&#039;s anger was the wormwood and the gall in the bitter cup that was put into his hands. &quot;O deliver my soul from that. Lord, though I lose my life, let me not lose thy love. Save me from the power of the dog, and from the lion&#039;s mouth.&quot; This seems to be meant of Satan, that old enemy who bruised the heel of the seed of the woman, the prince of this world, with whom he was to engage in close combat and whom he saw coming, Joh 14:30. &quot;Lord, save me from being overpowered by his terrors.&quot; He pleads, &quot;Thou hast formerly heard me from the horns of the unicorn,&quot; that is, &quot;saved me from him in answer to my prayer.&quot; This may refer to the victory Christ had obtained over Satan and his temptations (Mt. 4), when the devil left him for a season (Luk 4:13), but now returned in another manner to attack him with his terrors. &quot;Lord, thou gavest me the victory then, give it me now, that I may spoil principalities and powers, and cast out the prince of this world.&quot; Has God delivered us from the horns of the unicorn, that we be not tossed? Let that encourage us to hope that we shall be delivered from the lion&#039;s mouth, that we be not torn. He that has delivered doth and will deliver. This prayer of Christ, no doubt, was answered, for the Father heard him always. And, though he did not deliver him from death, yet he suffered him not to see corruption, but, the third day, raised him out of the dust of death, which was a greater instance of God&#039;s favour to him than if he had helped him down from the cross; for that would have hindered his undertaking, whereas his resurrection crowned it.
In singing this we should meditate on the sufferings and resurrection of Christ till we experience in our own souls the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.</p>

<p>The title of this psalm is very observable; it is a psalm to bring to remembrance; the 70th psalm, which was likewise penned in a day of affliction, is so entitled. It is designed, 1. To bring to his own remembrance. We will suppose it penned when he was sick and in pain, and then it teaches us that times of sickness are times to bring to remembrance, to bring the sin to remembrance, for which God contended with us, to awaken our consciences to deal faithfully and plainly with us, and set our sins in order before us, for our humiliation. In a day of adversity consider. Or we may suppose it penned after his recovery, but designed as a record of the convictions he was under and the workings of his heart when he was in affliction, that upon every review of this psalm he might call to mind the good impressions then made upon him and make a fresh improvement of them. To the same purport was the writing of Hezekiah when he had been sick. 2. To put others in mind of the same things which he was himself mindful of, and to teach them what to think and what to say when they are sick and in affliction; let them think as he did, and speak as he did.
I. He deprecates the wrath of God and his displeasure in his affliction (Psa 38:1): O Lord! rebuke me not in thy wrath. With this same petition he began another prayer for the visitation of the sick, Psa 6:1. This was most upon his heart, and should be most upon ours when we are in affliction, that, however God rebukes and chastens us, it may not be in wrath and displeasure, for that will be wormwood and gall in the affliction and misery. Those that would escape the wrath of God must pray against that more than any outward affliction, and be content to bear any outward affliction while it comes from, and consists with, the love of God.
II. He bitterly laments the impressions of God&#039;s displeasure upon his soul (Psa 38:2): Thy arrows stick fast in me. Let Job&#039;s complaint (Job 7:4) expound this of David. By the arrows of the Almighty he means the terrors of God, which did set themselves in array against him. He was under a very melancholy frightful apprehension of the wrath of God against him for his sins, and thought he could look for nothing but judgment and fiery indignation to devour him. God&#039;s arrows, as they are sure to hit the mark, so they are sure to stick where they hit, to stick fast, till he is pleased to draw them out and to bind up with his comforts the wound he has made with his terrors. This will be the everlasting misery of the damned - the arrows of God&#039;s wrath will stick fast in them and the wound will be incurable. &quot;Thy hand, thy heavy hand, presses me sore, and I am ready to sink under it; it not only lies hard upon me, but it lies long; and who knows the power of God&#039;s anger, the weight of his hand?&quot; Sometimes God shot his arrows, and stretched forth his hand, for David (Psa 18:14), but now against him; so uncertain is the continuance of divine comforts, where yet the continuance of divine grace is assured. He complains of God&#039;s wrath as that which inflicted the bodily distemper he was under (Psa 38:3): There is no soundness in my flesh because of thy anger. The bitterness of it, infused in his mind, affected his body; but that was not the worst: it caused the disquietude of his heart, by reason of which he forgot the courage of a soldier, the dignity of a prince, and all the cheerfulness of the sweet psalmist of Israel, and roared terribly, Psa 38:8. Nothing will disquiet the heart of a good man so much as the sense of God&#039;s anger, which shows what a fearful thing it is to fall into his hands. The way to keep the heart quiet is to keep ourselves in the love of God and to do nothing to offend him.
III. He acknowledges his sin to be the procuring provoking cause of all his troubles, and groans more under the load of guilt than any other load, Psa 38:3. He complains that his flesh had no soundness, his bones had no rest, so great an agitation he was in. &quot;It is because of thy anger; that kindles the fire which burns so fiercely;&quot; but, in the next words, he justifies God herein, and takes all the blame upon himself: &quot;It is because of my sin. I have deserved it, and so have brought it upon myself. My own iniquities do correct me.&quot; If our trouble be the fruit of God&#039;s anger, we may thank ourselves; it is our sin that is the cause of it. Are we restless? It is sin that makes us so. If there were not sin in our souls, there would be no pain in our bones, no illness in our bodies. It is sin therefore that this good man complains most of, 1. As a burden, a heavy burden (Psa 38:4): &quot;My iniquities have gone over my head, as proud waters over a man that is sinking and drowning, or as a heavy burden upon my head, pressing me down more than I am able to bear or to bear up under.&quot; Note, Sin is a burden. The power of sin dwelling in us is a weight, Heb 12:1. All are clogged with it; it keeps men from soaring upward and pressing forward. All the saints are complaining of it as a body of death they are loaded with, Rom 7:24. The guilt of sin committed by us is a burden, a heavy burden; it is a burden to God (he is pressed under it, Amo 2:13), a burden to the whole creation, which groans under it, Rom 8:21, Rom 8:22. It will, first or last, be a burden to the sinner himself, either a burden of repentance when he is pricked to the heart for it, labours, and is heavy-laden, under it, or a burden of ruin when it sinks him to the lowest hell and will for ever detain him there; it will be a talent of lead upon him, Zac 5:8. Sinners are said to bear their iniquity. Threatenings are burdens. 2. As wounds, dangerous wounds (Psa 38:5): &quot;My wounds stink and are corrupt (as wounds in the body rankle, and fester, and grow foul, for want of being dressed and looked after), and it is through my own foolishness.&quot; Sins are wounds (Gen 4:23), painful mortal wounds. Our wounds by sin are often in a bad condition, no care taken of them, no application made to them, and it is owing to the sinner&#039;s foolishness in not confessing sin, Psa 32:3, Psa 32:4. A slight sore, neglected, may prove of fatal consequence, and so may a slight sin slighted and left unrepented of.
IV. He bemoans himself because of his afflictions, and gives ease to his grief by giving vent to it and pouring out his complaint before the Lord.
1. He was troubled in mind, his conscience was pained, and he had no rest in his own spirit; and a wounded spirit who can bear? He was troubled, or distorted, bowed down greatly, and went mourning all the day long, Psa 38:6. He was always pensive and melancholy, which made him a burden and terror to himself. His spirit was feeble and sorely broken, and his heart disquieted, Psa 38:8. Herein David, in his sufferings, was a type of Christ, who, being in his agony, cried out, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful. This is a sorer affliction than any other in this world; whatever God is pleased to lay upon us, we have no reason to complain as long as he preserves to us the use of our reason and the peace of our consciences.
2. He was sick and weak in body; his loins were filled with a loathsome disease, some swelling, or ulcer, or inflammation (some think a plague-sore, such as Hezekiah&#039;s boil), and there was no soundness in his flesh, but, like Job, he was all over distempered. See (1.) What vile bodies these are which we carry about with us, what grievous diseases they are liable to, and what an offence and grievance they may soon be made by some diseases to the souls that animate them, as they always are a cloud and cog. (2.) That the bodies both of the greatest and of the best of men have in them the same seeds of diseases that the bodies of others have, and are liable to the same disasters. David himself, though so great a prince and so great a saint, was not exempt from the most grievous diseases: there was no soundness even in his flesh. Probably this was after his sin in the matter of Uriah, and thus did he smart in his flesh for his fleshly lusts. When, at any time, we are distempered in our bodies, we ought to remember how God has been dishonoured in and by our bodies. He was feeble and sorely broken, Psa 38:8. His heart panted, and was in a continual palpitation, Psa 38:10. His strength and limbs failed him. As for the light of his eyes, that had gone from him, either with much weeping or by a defluxion of rheum upon them, or perhaps through the lowness of his spirits and the frequent returns of fainting. Note, Sickness will tame the strongest body and the stoutest spirit. David was famed for his courage and great exploits; and yet, when God contended with him by bodily sickness and the impressions of his wrath upon his mind, his hair is cut, his heart fails him, and he becomes weak as water. Therefore let not the strong man glory in his strength, nor any man set grief at defiance, however it may be thought at a distance.
3. His friends were unkind to him (Psa 38:11): My lovers (such as had been merry with him in the day of his mirth) now stand aloof from my sore; they would not sympathize with him in his griefs, nor so much as come within hearing of his complaints, but, like the priest and Levite (Luk 10:31), passed on the other side. Even his kinsmen, that were bound to him by blood and alliance, stood afar off. See what little reason we have to trust in man or to wonder if we disappointed in our expectations of kindness from men. Adversity tries friendship, and separates between the precious and the vile. It is our wisdom to make sure a friend in heaven, who will not stand aloof from our sore and from whose love no tribulation nor distress shall be able to separate us. David, in his troubles, was a type of Christ in his agony, Christ, on his cross, feeble and sorely broken, and then deserted by his friends and kinsmen, who beheld afar off.
V. In the midst of his complaints, he comforts himself with the cognizance God graciously took both of his griefs and of his prayers (Psa 38:9): &quot;Lord, all my desire is before thee. Thou knowest what I want and what I would have: My groaning is not hidden from thee. Thou knowest the burdens I groan under and the blessings I groan after.&quot; The groanings which cannot be uttered are not hidden from him that searches the heart and knows what is the mind of the Spirit, Rom 8:26, Rom 8:27.
In singing this, and praying it over, whatever burden lies upon our spirits, we would by faith cast it upon God, and all our care concerning it, and then be easy.</p>

<p>We have reason to think that this psalm refers to the malice of Saul and his janizaries against David, because it bears the same inscription (Al-taschith, and Michtam of David) with that which goes before and that which follows, both which appear, by the title, to have been penned with reference to that persecution through which God preserved him (Al-taschith - Destroy not), and therefore the psalms he then penned were precious to him, Michtams - David&#039;s jewels, as Dr. Hammond translates it.
In these verses David, not as a king, for he had not yet come to the throne, but as a prophet, in God&#039;s name arraigns and convicts his judges, with more authority and justice than they showed in prosecuting him. Two things he charges them with:
I. The corruption of their government. They were a congregation, a bench of justices, nay, perhaps, a congress or convention of the states, from whom one might have expected fair dealing, for they were men learned in the laws, had been brought up in the study of these statutes and judgments, which were so righteous that those of other nations were not to be compared with them. One would not have thought a congregation of such could be bribed and biassed with pensions, and yet, it seems, they were, because the son of Kish could do that for them which the son of Jesse could not, Sa1 22:7. He had vineyards, and fields, and preferments, to give them, and therefore, to please him, they would do any thing, right or wrong. Of all the melancholy views which Solomon took of this earth and its grievances, nothing vexed him so much as to see that in the place of judgment wickedness was there, Ecc 3:16. So it was in Saul&#039;s time. 1. The judges would not do right, would not protect or vindicate oppressed innocency (Psa 58:1): &quot;Do you indeed speak righteousness, or judge uprightly? No; you are far from it; your own consciences cannot but tell you that you do not discharge the trust reposed in you as magistrates, by which you are bound to be a terror to evil-doers and a praise to those that do well. Is this the justice you pretend to administer? Is this the patronage, this the countenance, which an honest man and an honest cause may expect from you? Remember you are sons of men; mortal and dying, and that you stand upon the same level before God with the meanest of those you trample upon, and must yourselves be called to an account and judged. You are sons of men, and therefore we may appeal to yourselves, and to that law of nature which is written in every man&#039;s heart: Do you indeed speak righteousness? And will not your second thoughts correct what you have done?&quot; Note, It is good for us often to reflect upon what we say with this serious question, Do we indeed speak righteousness? that we may unsay what we have spoken amiss and may proceed no further in it. 2. They did a great deal of wrong; they used their power for the support of injury and oppression (Psa 58:2): In heart you work wickedness (all the wickedness of the life is wrought in the heart). It intimates that they wrought with a great deal of plot and management, not by surprise, but with premeditation and design, and with a strong inclination to it and resolution in it. The moire there is of the heart in any act of wickedness the worse it is, Ecc 8:11. And what was their wickedness? It follows, &quot;You weigh the violence of your hands in the earth&quot; (or in the land), &quot;the peace of which you are appointed to be the conservators of.&quot; They did all the violence and injury they could, either to enrich or avenge themselves, and they weighed it; that is, 1. They did it with a great deal of craft and caution: &quot;You frame it by rule and lines&quot; (so the word signifies), &quot;that it may effectually answer your mischievous intentions; such masters are you of the art of oppression.&quot; 2. They did it under colour of justice. They held the balances (the emblem of justice) in their hands, as if they designed to do right, and right is expected from them, but the result is violence and oppression, which are practised the more effectually for being practised under the pretext of law and right.
II. The corruption of their nature. This was the root of bitterness from which that gall and wormwood sprang (Psa 58:3): The wicked, who in heart work wickedness, are estranged from the womb, estranged from God and all good, alienated from the divine life, and its principles, powers, and pleasures, Eph 4:18. A sinful state is a state of estrangement from that acquaintance with God and service of him which we were made for. Let none wonder that these wicked men dare do such things, for wickedness is bred in the bone with them; they brought it into the world with them; they have in their natures a strong inclination to it; they learned it from their wicked parents, and have been trained up in it by a bad education. They are called, and not miscalled, transgressors from the womb; one can therefore expect no other than that they will deal very treacherously; see Isa 48:8. They go astray from God and their duty as soon as they are born, (that is, as soon as possibly they can); the foolishness that is bound up in their hearts appears with the first operations of reason; as the wheat springs up, the tares spring up with it. Three instances are here given of the corruption of nature: - 1. Falsehood. They soon learn to speak lies, and bend their tongues, like their bows, for that purpose, Jer 9:3. How soon will little children tell a lie to excuse a fault, or in their own commendation! No sooner can they speak than they speak to God&#039;s dishonour; tongue-sins are some of the first of our actual transgressions. 2. Malice. Their poison (that is, their ill-will, and the spite they bore to goodness and all good men, particularly to David) was like the poison of a serpent, innate, venomous, and very mischievous, and that which they can never be cured of. We pity a dog that is poisoned by accident, but hate a serpent that is poisonous by nature. Such as the cursed enmity in this serpent&#039;s brood against the Lord and his anointed. 3. Untractableness. They are malicious, and nothing will work upon them, no reason, no kindness, to mollify them, and bring them to a better temper. They are like the deaf adder that stops her ear, Psa 58:4, Psa 58:5. The psalmist, having compared these wicked men, whom he here complains of, to serpents, for their poisonous malice, takes occasion thence, upon another account, to compare them to the deaf adder or viper, concerning which there was then this vulgar tradition, that whereas, by music or some other art, they had a way of charming serpents, so as either to destroy them or at least disable them to do mischief, this deaf adder would lay one ear to the ground and stop the other with her tail, so that she could not hear the voice of the enchantment, and so defeated the intention of it and secured herself. The using of this comparison neither verifies the story, nor, if it were true, justifies the use of this enchantment; for it is only an allusion to the report of such a thing, to illustrate the obstinacy of sinners in a sinful way. God&#039;s design, in his word and providence, is to cure serpents of their malignity; to this end how wise, how powerful, how well-chosen are the charms! How forcible the right words! But all in vain with most men; and what is the reason? It is because they will not hearken. None so deaf as those that will not hear. We have piped unto men, and they have not danced; how should they, when they have stopped their ears?</p>

<p>David had been speaking before of the spiteful reproaches which his enemies cast upon him; here he adds, But, as for me, my prayer is unto thee. They spoke ill of him for his fasting and praying, and for that he was made the song of the drunkards; but, notwithstanding that, he resolves to continue praying. Note, Though we may be jeered for well-doing, we must never be jeered out of it. Those can bear but little for God, and their confessing his name before men, that cannot bear a scoff and a hard word rather than quit their duty. David&#039;s enemies were very abusive to him, but this was his comfort, that he had a God to go to, with whom he would lodge his cause. &quot;They think to carry their cause by insolence and calumny; but I use other methods. Whatever they do, As for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord!&quot; And it was in an acceptable time, not the less acceptable for being a time of affliction. God will not drive us from him, though it is need that drives us to him; nay, it is the more acceptable, because the misery and distress of God&#039;s people make them so much the more the objects of his pity: it is seasonable for him to help them when all other helps fail, and they are undone, and feel that they are undone, if he do not help them. We find this expression used concerning Christ. Isa 49:8, In an acceptable time have I heard thee. Now observe,
I. What his requests are. 1. That he might have a gracious audience given to his complaints, the cry of his affliction, and the desire of his heart. Hear me (Psa 69:13), and again, Hear me, O Lord! (Psa 69:16), Hear me speedily (Psa 69:17), not only hear what I say, but grant what I ask. Christ knew that the Father heard him always, Joh 11:42. 2. That he might be rescued out of his troubles, might be saved from sinking under the load of grief (Deliver me out of the mire; let me not stick in it, so some, but help me out, and set my feet on a rock, Psa 40:2), might be saved from his enemies, that they might not swallow him up, nor have their will against him: &quot;Let me be delivered from those that hate me, as a lamb from the paw of a lion, Psa 69:14. Though I have come into keep waters (Psa 69:2), where I am ready to conclude that the floods will overflow me, yet let my fears be prevented and silenced; let not the waterflood, though it flow upon me, overflow me, Psa 69:15. Let me not fall into the gulf of despair; let not that deep swallow me up; let not that pit shut her mouth upon me, for then I am undone.&quot; He gave himself up for lost in the beginning of the psalm; yet now he has his head above water, and is not so weary of crying as he thought himself. 3. That God would turn to him (Psa 69:16), that he would smile upon him, and not hide his face from him, Psa 69:17. The tokens of God&#039;s favour to us, and the light of his countenance shining upon us, are enough to keep our spirits from sinking in the deepest mire of outward troubles, nor need we desire any more to make us safe and easy, Psa 69:18. &quot;Draw nigh to my soul, to manifest thyself to it, and that shall redeem it.&quot;
II. What his pleas are to enforce these petitions. 1. He pleads God&#039;s mercy and truth (Psa 69:13): In the multitude of thy mercy hear me. There is mercy in God, a multitude of mercies, all kinds of mercy, inexhaustible mercy, mercy enough for all, enough for each; and hence we must take our encouragement in praying. The truth also of his salvation (the truth of all those promises of salvation which he has made to those that trust in him) is a further encouragement. He repeats his argument taken from the mercy of God: &quot;Hear me, for thy lovingkindness of good. It is so in itself; it is rich and plentiful and abundant. It is so in the account of all the saints; it is very precious to them, it is their life, their joy, their all. O let me have the benefit of it! Turn to me, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies,&quot; Psa 69:16. See how highly he speaks of the goodness of God: in him there are mercies, tender mercies, and a multitude of them. If we think well of God, and continue to do so under the greatest hardships, we need not fear but God will do well for us; for he takes pleasure in those that hope in his mercy, Psa 147:11. 2. He pleads his own distress and affliction: &quot;Hide not thy face from me, for I am in trouble (Psa 69:17), and therefore need thy favour; therefore it will come seasonably, and therefore I shall know how to value it.&quot; He pleads particularly the reproach he was under and the indignities that were done him (Psa 69:19): Thou hast known my reproach, my shame, and my dishonour. See what a stress is laid upon this; for, in the sufferings of Christ for us, perhaps nothing contributed more to the satisfaction he made for sin, which had been so injurious to God in his honour, than the reproach, and shame, and dishonour he underwent, which God took notice of, and accepted as more than an equivalent for the everlasting shame and contempt which our sins had deserved, and therefore we must by repentance take shame to ourselves and bear the reproach of our youth. And if at any time we be called out to suffer reproach, and shame, and dishonour, for his sake, this may be our comfort, that he knows it, and, as he is before-hand with us, so he will not be behind-hand with us. The Psalmist speaks the language of an ingenuous nature when he says (Psa 69:20): Reproach has broken my heart; I am full of heaviness; for it bears hard upon one that knows the worth of a good name to be put under a bad character; but when we consider what an honour it is to be dishonoured for God, and what a favour to be counted worthy to suffer shame for his name (as they deemed it, Act 5:41), we shall see there is no reason at all why it should sit so heavily or be any heart-breaking to us. 3. He pleads the insolence and cruelty of his enemies (Psa 69:18): Deliver me because of my enemies, because they were such as he had before described them, Psa 69:4. &quot;My adversaries are all before thee (Psa 69:19); thou knowest what sort of men they are, what danger I am in from them, what enemies they are to thee, and how much thou art reflected upon in what they do and design against me.&quot; One instance of their barbarity is given (Psa 69:21): They gave me gall for my meat (the word signifies a bitter herb, and is often joined with wormwood) and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. This was literally fulfilled in Christ, and did so directly point to him that he would not say It is finished till this was fulfilled; and, in order that his enemies might have occasion to fulfil it, he said, I thirst, Joh 19:28, Joh 19:29. Some think that the hyssop which they put to his mouth with the vinegar was the bitter herb which they gave him with the vinegar for his meat. See how particularly the sufferings of Christ were foretold, which proves the scripture to be the word of God, and how exactly the predictions were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, which proves him to be the true Messiah. This is he that should come, and we are to look for no other. 4. He pleads the unkindness of his friends and his disappointment in them (Psa 69:20): I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; they all failed him like the brooks in summer. This was fulfilled in Christ, for in his sufferings all his disciples forsook him and fled. We cannot expect too little from men (miserable comforters are they all); nor can we expect too much from God, for he is the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort and consolation.</p>

<p>In these verses we have two great doctrines laid down and two good inferences drawn from them, for the confirmation of what he had before said.
I. Here are two great truths laid down concerning God&#039;s government of the world, which we ought to mix faith with, both pertinent to the occasion: -
1. That from God alone kings receive their power (Psa 75:6, Psa 75:7), and therefore to God alone David would give the praise of his advancement; having his power from God he would use it for him, and therefore those were fools that lifted up the horn against him. We see strange revolutions in states and kingdoms, and are surprised at the sudden disgrace of some and elevation of others; we are all full of such changes, when they happen; but here we are directed to look at the author of them, and are taught where the original of power is, and whence promotion comes. Whence comes preferment to kingdoms, to the sovereignty of them? And whence come preferments in kingdoms, to places of power and trust in them? The former depends not upon the will of the people, nor the latter on the will of the prince, but both on the will of God, who has all hearts in his hands; to him therefore those must look who are in pursuit of preferment, and then they begin aright. We are here told, (1.) Negatively, which way we are not to look for the fountain of power: Promotion comes not from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert, that is, neither from the desert on the north of Jerusalem nor from that on the south; so that the fair gale of preferment is not to be expected to blow from any point of the compass, but only from above, directly thence. Men cannot gain promotion either by the wisdom or wealth of the children of the east, nor by the numerous forces of the isles of the Gentiles, that lay westward, nor those of Egypt or Arabia, that lay south; no concurring smiles of second causes will raise men to preferment without the first cause. The learned bishop Lloyd (Serm. in loc.) gives this gloss upon it: &quot;All men took the original of power to be from heaven, but from whom there many knew not; the eastern nations, who were generally given to astrology, took it to come from their stars, especially the sun, their god. No, says David, it comes neither from the east nor from the west, neither from the rising nor from the setting of such a planet, or such a constellation, nor from the south, nor from the exaltation of the sun or any star in the mid-heaven.&quot; He mentions not the north, because none supposed it to come thence; or because the same word that signifies the north signifies the secret place, and from the secret of God&#039;s counsel it does come, or from the oracle in Zion, which lay on the north side of Jerusalem. Note, No wind is so good as to blow promotion, but as he directs who has the winds in his fists. (2.) Positively: God is the judge, the governor or umpire. When parties contend for the prize, he puts down one and sets up another as he sees fit, so as to serve his own purposes and bring to pass his own counsels. Herein he acts by prerogative, and is not accountable to us for any of these matters; nor is it any damage, danger, or disgrace that he, who is infinitely wise, holy, and good, has an arbitrary and despotic power to set up and put down whom, and when, and how he pleases. This is a good reason why magistrates should rule for God as those that must give account to him, because it is by him that kings reign.
2. That from God alone all must receive their doom (Psa 75:8): In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, which he puts into the hands of the children of men, a cup of providence, mixed up (as he thinks fit) of many ingredients, a cup of affliction. The sufferings of Christ are called a cup, Mat 20:22; Joh 18:11. The judgments of God upon sinners are the cup of the Lord&#039;s right hand, Hab 2:16. The wine is red, denoting the wrath of God, which is infused into the judgments executed on sinners, and is the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery. It is read as fire, red as blood, for it burns, it kills. It is full of mixture, prepared in wisdom, so as to answer the end. There are mixtures of mercy and grace in the cup of affliction when it is put into the hands of God&#039;s own people, mixtures of the curse when it is put into the hands of the wicked; it is wine mingled with gall. These vials, (1.) Are poured out upon all; see Rev 15:7; Rev 16:1; where we read of the angels pouring out the vials of God&#039;s wrath upon the earth. Some drops of this wrath may light on good people; when God&#039;s judgments are abroad, they have their share in common calamities; but, (2.) The dregs of the cup are reserved for the wicked. The calamity itself is but the vehicle into which the wrath and curse is infused, the top of which has little of the infusion; but the sediment is pure wrath, and that shall fall to the share of sinners; they have the dregs of the cup now in the terrors of conscience, and hereafter in the torments of hell. They shall wring them out, that not a drop of the wrath may be left behind, and they shall drink them, for the curse shall enter into their bowels like water and like oil into their bones. The cup of the Lord&#039;s indignation will be to them a cup of trembling, everlasting trembling, Rev 14:10. The wicked man&#039;s cup, while he prospers in the world, is full of mixture, but the worst is at the bottom. The wicked are reserved unto the day of judgment.
II. Here are two good practical inferences drawn from these great truths, and they are the same purposes of duty that he began the psalm with. This being so, 1. He will praise God, and give him glory, for the power to which he has advanced him (Psa 75:9): I will declare for ever that which thy wondrous works declare, Psa 75:1. He will praise God for his elevation, not only at first, while the mercy was fresh, but for ever, so long as he lives. The exaltation of the Son of David will be the subject of the saints&#039; everlasting praises. He will give glory to God, not only as his God, but as the God of Jacob, knowing it was for Jacob his servant&#039;s sake, and because he loved his people Israel, that he made him king over them. 2. He will use the power with which he is entrusted for the great ends for which it was put into his hands, Psa 75:10, as before, Psa 75:2, Psa 75:4. According to the duty of the higher powers, (1.) He resolves to be a terror to evildoers, to humble their pride and break their power: &quot;Though not all the heads, yet all the horns, of the wicked will I cut off, with which they push their poor neighbours; I will disable them to do mischief.&quot; Thus God promises to raise up carpenters who should fray the horns of the Gentiles that had scattered Judah and Israel, Zac 1:18-21. (2.) He resolves to be a protection and praise to those that do well: The horns of the righteous shall be exalted; they shall be preferred and be put into places of power; and those that are good, and have hearts to do good, shall not want ability and opportunity for it. This agrees with David&#039;s resolutions, Psa 101:3, etc. Herein David was a type of Christ, who with the breath of his mouth shall slay the wicked, but shall exalt with honour the horn of the righteous, Psa 112:9.</p>

<p>It should seem, by the titles of this and the following psalm, that Heman was the penman of the one and Ethan of the other. There were two, of these names, who were sons of Zerah the son of Judah, Ch1 2:4, Ch1 2:6. There were two others famed for wisdom, Kg1 4:31, where, to magnify Solomon&#039;s wisdom, he is said to be wiser than Heman and Ethan. Whether the Heman and Ethan who were Levites and precentors in the songs of Zion were the same we are not sure, nor which of these, nor whether any of these, were the penmen of these psalms. There was a Heman that was one of the chief singers, who is called the king&#039;s seer, or prophet, in the words of God (Ch1 25:5); it is probable that this also was a seer, and yet could see no comfort for himself, an instructor and comforter of others, and yet himself putting comfort away from him. The very first words of the psalm are the only words of comfort and support in all the psalm. There is nothing about him but clouds and darkness; but, before he begins his complaint, he calls God the God of his salvation, which intimates both that he looked for salvation, bad as things were, and that he looked up to God for the salvation and depended upon him to be the author of it. Now here we have the psalmist,
I. A man of prayer, one that gave himself to prayer at all times, but especially now that he was in affliction; for is any afflicted? let him pray. It is his comfort that he had prayed; it is his complaint that, notwithstanding his prayer, he was still in affliction. He was, 1. Very earnest in prayer: &quot;I have cried unto thee (Psa 88:1), and have stretched out my hands unto thee (Psa 88:9), as one that would take hold on thee, and even catch at the mercy, with a holy fear of coming short and missing of it.&quot; 2. He was very frequent and constant in prayer: I have called upon thee daily (Psa 88:9), nay, day and night, Psa 88:1. For thus men ought always to pray, and not to faint; God&#039;s own elect cry day and night to him, not only morning and evening, beginning every day and every night with prayer, but spending the day and night in prayer. This is indeed praying always; and then we shall speed in prayer, when we continue instant in prayer. 3. He directed his prayer to God, and from him expected and desired an answer (Psa 88:2): &quot;Let my prayer come before thee, to be accepted of thee, not before men, to be seen of them, as the Pharisees&#039; prayers.&quot; He does not desire that men should hear them, but, &quot;Lord, incline thy ear unto my cry, for to that I refer myself; give what answer to it thou pleasest.&quot;
II. He was a man of sorrows, and therefore some make him, in this psalm, a type of Christ, whose complaints on the cross, and sometimes before, were much to the same purport with this psalm. He cries out (Psa 88:3): My soul is full of troubles; so Christ said, Now is my soul troubled; and, in his agony, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death, like the psalmist&#039;s here, for he says, My life draws nigh unto the grave. Heman was a very wise man, and a very good man, a man of God, and a singer too, and one may therefore suppose him to have been a man of a cheerful spirit, and yet now a man of sorrowful spirit, troubled in mind, and upon the brink of despair. Inward trouble is the sorest trouble, and that which, sometimes, the best of God&#039;s saints and servants have been severely exercised with. The spirit of man, of the greatest of men, will not always sustain his infirmity, but will droop and sink under it; who then can bear a wounded spirit?
III. He looked upon himself as a dying man, whose heart was ready to break with sorrow (Psa 88:5): &quot;Free among the dead (one of that ghastly corporation), like the slain that lie in the grave, whose rotting and perishing nobody takes notice of or is concerned for, nay, whom thou rememberest no more, to protect or provide for the dead bodies, but they become an easy prey to corruption and the worms; they are cut off from thy hand, which used to be employed in supporting them and reaching out to them; but, now there is no more occasion for this, they are cut off from it and cut off by it&quot; (for God will not stretch out his hand to the grave, Job 30:24); &quot;thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, as low as possible, my condition low, my spirits low, in darkness, in the deep (Psa 88:6), sinking, and seeing no way open of escape, brought to the last extremity, and ready to give up all for gone.&quot; Thus greatly may good men be afflicted, such dismal apprehensions may they have concerning their afflictions, and such dark conclusions may they sometimes be ready to make concerning the issue of them, through the power of melancholy and the weakness of faith.
IV. He complained most of God&#039;s displeasure against him, which infused the wormwood and the gall into the affliction and the misery (Psa 88:7): Thy wrath lies hard upon me. Could he have discerned the favour and love of God in his affliction, it would have lain light upon him; but it lay hard, very hard, upon him, so that he was ready to sink and faint under it. The impressions of this wrath upon his spirits were God&#039;s waves with which he afflicted him, which rolled upon him, one on the neck of another, so that he scarcely recovered from one dark thought before he was oppressed with another; these waves beat against him with noise and fury; not some, but all, of God&#039;s waves were made use of in afflicting him and bearing him down. Even the children of God&#039;s love may sometimes apprehend themselves children of wrath, and no outward trouble can lie so hard upon them as that apprehension.
V. It added to his affliction that his friends deserted him and made themselves strange to him. When we are in trouble it is some comfort to have those about us that love us, and sympathize with us; but this good man had none such, which gives him occasion, not to accuse them, or charge them with treachery, ingratitude, and inhumanity, but to complain to God, with an eye to his hand in this part of the affliction (Psa 88:8): Thou hast put away my acquaintance far from me. Providence had removed them, or rendered them incapable of being serviceable to him, or alienated their affections from him; for every creature is that to us (and no more) that God makes it to be. If our old acquaintance be shy of us, and those we expect kindness from prove unkind, we must bear that with the same patient submission to the divine will that we do other afflictions, Job 19:13. Nay, his friends were not only strange to him, but even hated him, because he was poor and in distress: &quot;Thou hast made me an abomination to them; they are not only shy of me, but sick of me, and I am looked upon by them, not only with contempt, but with abhorrence.&quot; Let none think it strange concerning such a trial as this, when Heman, who was so famed for wisdom, was yet, when the world frowned upon him, neglected, as a vessel in which is no pleasure.
VI. He looked upon his case as helpless and deplorable: &quot;I am shut up, and I cannot come forth, a close prisoner, under the arrests of divine wrath, and no way open of escape.&quot; He therefore lies down and sinks under his troubles, because he sees not any probability of getting out of them. For thus he bemoans himself (Psa 88:9): My eye mourneth by reason of affliction. Sometimes giving vent to grief by weeping gives some ease to a troubled spirit. Yet weeping must not hinder praying; we must sow in tears: My eye mourns, but I cry unto thee daily. Let prayers and tears go together, and they shall be accepted together. I have heard thy prayers, I have seen thy tears.</p>

<p>The title of this psalm is very observable; it is a prayer of the afflicted. It was composed by one that was himself afflicted, afflicted with the church and for it; and on those that are of a public spirit afflictions of that kind lie heavier than any other. It is calculated for an afflicted state, and is intended for the use of others that may be in the like distress; for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written designedly for our use. The whole word of God is of use to direct us in prayer; but here, as often elsewhere, the Holy Ghost has drawn up our petition for us, has put words into our mouths. Hos 14:2, Take with you words. Here is a prayer put into the hands of the afflicted: let them set, not their hands, but their hearts to it, and present it to God. Note, 1. It is often the lot of the best saints in this world to be sorely affected. 2. Even good men may be almost overwhelmed with their afflictions, and may be ready to faint under them. 3. When our state is afflicted, and our spirits are overwhelmed, it is our duty and interest to pray, and by prayer to pour out our complaints before the Lord, which intimates the leave God gives us to be free with him and the liberty of speech we have before him, as well as liberty of access to him; it intimates also what an ease it is to an afflicted spirit to unburden itself by a humble representation of its grievances and griefs. Such a representation we have here, in which,
I. The psalmist humbly begs of God to take notice of his affliction, and of his prayer in his affliction, Psa 102:1, Psa 102:2. When we pray in our affliction, 1. It should be our care that God would graciously hear us; for, if our prayers be not pleasing to God, they will be to no purpose to ourselves. Let this therefore be in our eye that our prayer may come unto God, even to his ears (Psa 18:6); and, in order to that, let us lift up the prayer, and our souls with it. 2. It may be our hope that God will graciously hear us, because he has appointed us to seek him and has promised we shall not seek him in vain. If we put up a prayer in faith, we may in faith say, Hear my prayer, O Lord! &quot;Hear me,&quot; that is, (1.) &quot;Manifest thyself to me, hide not thy face from me in displeasure, when I am in trouble. If thou dost not quickly free me, yet let me know that thou favourest me; if I see not the operations of thy hand for me, yet let me see the smiles of thy face upon me.&quot; God&#039;s hiding his face is trouble enough to a good man even in his prosperity (Psa 30:7, Thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled); but if, when we are in trouble, God hides his face, the case is sad indeed. (2.) &quot;Manifest thyself for me; not only hear me, but answer me; grant me the deliverance I am in want of and in pursuit of; answer me speedily, even in the day when I call.&quot; When troubles press hard upon us, God gives us leave to be thus pressing in prayer, yet with humility and patience.
II. He makes a lamentable complaint of the low condition to which he was reduced by his afflictions. 1. His body was macerated and emaciated, and he had become a perfect skeleton, nothing but skin and bones. As prosperity and joy are represented by making fat the bones, and the bones flourishing like a herb, so great trouble and grief are here represented by the contrary: My bones are burnt as a hearth (Psa 102:3); they cleave to my skin (Psa 102:5); nay, my heart is smitten, and withered like grass (Psa 102:4); it touches the vitals, and there is a sensible decay there. I am withered like grass (Psa 102:11), scorched with the burning heat of my troubles. If we be thus brought low by bodily distempers, let us not think it strange; the body is like grass, weak and of the earth, no wonder then that it withers. 2. He was very melancholy and of a sorrowful spirit. He was so taken up with the thoughts of his troubles that he forgot to eat his bread (Psa 102:4); he had no appetite to his necessary food nor could he relish it. When God hides his face from a soul the delights of sense will be sapless things. He was always sighing and groaning, as one pressed above measure (Psa 102:5), and this wasted him and exhausted his spirits. He affected solitude, as melancholy people do. His friends deserted him and were shy of him, and he cared as little for their company (Psa 102:6, Psa 102:7): &quot;I am like a pelican of the wilderness, or a bittern (so some) that make a doleful noise; I am like an owl, that affects to lodge in deserted ruined buildings; I watch, and am as a sparrow upon the house-top. I live in a garret, and there spend my hours in poring on my troubles and bemoaning myself.&quot; Those who do thus, when they are in sorrow, humour themselves indeed; but they prejudice themselves, and know not what they do, nor what advantage they hereby give to the tempter. In affliction we should sit alone to consider our ways (Lam 3:28), but not sit alone to indulge an inordinate grief. 3. He was evil-spoken of by his enemies, and all manner of evil was said against him. When his friends went off from him his foes set themselves against him (Psa 102:8): My enemies reproach me all the day, designing thereby both to create vexation to him (for an ingenuous mind regrets reproach) and to bring an odium upon him before men. When they could not otherwise reach him they shot these arrows at him, even bitter words. In this they were unwearied; they did it all the day; it was a continual dropping. His enemies were very outrageous: They are mad against me, and very obstinate and implacable. They are sworn against me; as the Jews that bound themselves with an oath that they would kill Paul; or, They have sworn against me as accusers, to take away my life. 4. He fasted and wept under the tokens of God&#039;s displeasure (Psa 102:9, Psa 102:10): &quot;I have eaten ashes like bread; instead of eating my bread, I have lain down in dust and ashes, and I have mingled my drink with weeping; when I should have refreshed myself with drinking I have only eased myself with weeping.&quot; And what is the matter? He tells us (Psa 102:10): Because of thy wrath. It was not so much the trouble itself that troubled him as the wrath of God which he was under the apprehensions of as the cause of the trouble. This, this was the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery: Thou hast lifted me up and cast me down, as that which we cast to the ground with a design to dash it to pieces; we lift up first, that we may throw it down with the more violence; or, &quot;Thou hast formerly lifted me up in honour, and joy, and uncommon prosperity; but the remembrance of that aggravates the present grief and makes it the more grievous.&quot; We must eye the hand of God both in lifting us up and casting us down, and say, &quot;Blessed be the name of the Lord, who both gives and takes away.&quot; 5. He looked upon himself as a dying man: My days are consumed like smoke (Psa 102:3), which vanishes away quickly. Or, They are consumed in smoke, of which nothing remains; they are like a shadow that declines (Psa 102:11), like the evening-shadow, or a forerunner of approaching night. Now all this, though it seems to speak the psalmist&#039;s personal calamities, and therefore is properly a prayer for a particular person afflicted, yet is supposed to be a description of the afflictions of the church of God, with which the psalmist sympathizes, making public grievances his own. The mystical body of Christ is sometimes, like the psalmist&#039;s body here, withered and parched, nay, like dead and dry bones. The church sometimes is forced into the wilderness, seems lost, and gives up herself for gone, under the tokens of God&#039;s displeasure.</p>

<p>See here, 1. How David was abused even by great men, who should have known better his character and his case, and have been more generous: Princes did sit, sit in council, sit in judgment, and speak against me. What even princes say is not always right; but it is sad when judgment is thus turned to wormwood, when those that should be the protectors of the innocent are their betrayers. Herein David was a type of Christ, for they were the princes of this world that vilified and crucified the Lord of glory, Co1 2:8. 2. What method he took to make himself easy under these abuses: he meditated in God&#039;s statutes, went on in his duty, and did not regard them; as a deaf man, he heard not. When they spoke against him, he found that in the word of God which spoke for him, and spoke comfort to him, and then none of these things moved him. Those that have pleasure in communion with God may easily despise the censures of men, even of princes.</p>

<p>Here are two things which will be comforts to us: -
I. Consciousness of our integrity. This was David&#039;s rejoicing, that his heart could witness for him that he had walked humbly with his God, notwithstanding the censures he was under and the temptations he was in.
1. He aimed not at a high condition, nor was he desirous of making a figure in the world, but, if God had so ordered, could have been well content to spend all his days, as he did in the beginning of them, in the sheep-folds. His own brother, in a passion, charged him with pride (Sa1 17:28), but the charge was groundless and unjust. God, who searches the heart, knew, (1.) That he had no conceited opinion of himself, or his own merits: Lord, my heart is not haughty. Humble saints cannot think so well of themselves as others think of them, are not in love with their own shadow, nor do they magnify their own attainments or achievements. The love of God reigning in the heart will subdue all inordinate self-love. (2.) That he had neither a scornful nor an aspiring look: &quot;My eyes are not lofty, either to look with envy upon those that are above me or to look with disdain upon those that are below me.&quot; Where there is a proud heart there is commonly a proud look (Pro 6:17), but the humble publican will not so much as lift up his eyes. (3.) That he did not employ himself in things above his station, in things too great or too high for him. He did not employ himself in studies too high; he made God&#039;s word his meditation, and did not amuse himself with matters of nice speculation or doubtful disputation, or covet to be wise above what is written. To know God and our duty is learning sufficiently high for us. He did not employ himself in affairs too great; he followed his ewes, and never set up for a politician; no, nor for a soldier; for, when his brethren went to the wars, he staid at home to keep the sheep. It is our wisdom, and will be our praise, to keep within our sphere, and not to intrude into things which we have not seen, or meddle with that which does not belong to us. Princes and scholars must not exercise themselves in matters too great, too high, for men: and those in a low station, and of ordinary capacities, must not pretend to that which is out of their reach, and which they were not cut out for. Those will fall under due shame that affect undue honours.
2. He was well reconciled to every condition that God placed him in (Psa 131:2): I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother. As he had not proudly aimed at the kingdom, so, since God had appointed him to it, he had not behaved insolently towards any, nor been restless in his attempts to get the crown before the time set; but, (1.) He had been as humble as a little child about the age of a weanling, as manageable and governable, and as far from aiming at high things; as entirely at God&#039;s disposal as the child at the disposal of the mother or nurse; as far from taking state upon him, though anointed to be king, or valuing himself upon the prospect of his future advancement, as a child in the arms. Our Saviour has taught us humility by this comparison (Mat 18:3); we must become as little children. (2.) He had been as indifferent to the wealth and honour of this world as a child is to the breast when it is thoroughly weaned from it. I have levelled and quieted myself (so Dr. Hammond reads it) as a child that is weaned. This intimates that our hearts are naturally as desirous of worldly things as the babe is of the breast, and in like manner relish them, cry for them, are fond of them, play with them, and cannot live without them. But, by the grace of God, a soul that is sanctified, is weaned from those things. Providence puts wormwood upon the breast, and that helps to wean us. The child is perhaps cross and fretful while it is in the weaning and thinks itself undone when it has lost the breast. But in a day or two it is forgotten; the fret is over, and it accommodates itself well enough to a new way of feeding, cares no longer for milk, but can bear strong meat. Thus does a gracious soul quiet itself under the loss of that which it loved and disappointment in that which it hoped for, and is easy whatever happens, lives, and lives comfortably, upon God and the covenant-grace, when creatures prove dry breasts. When our condition is not to our mind we must bring our mind to our condition; and then we are easy to ourselves and all about us; then our souls are as a weaned child.
II. Confidence in God; and this David recommends to all Israel of God, no doubt from his own experience of the benefit of it (Psa 131:3): Let Israel hope in the Lord, and let them continue to do so henceforth and for ever. Though David could himself wait patiently and quietly for the crown designed him, yet perhaps Israel, the people whose darling he was, would be ready to attempt something in favour of him before the time; and therefore endeavours to quiet them too, and bids them hope in the Lord that they should see a happy change of the face of affairs in due time. Thus it is good to hope and quietly to wait for the salvation of the Lord.</p>

<p>Mercy to accept what we do well, and grace to keep us from doing ill, are the two things which we are here taught by David&#039;s example to pray to God for.
I. David loved prayer, and he begs of God that his prayers might be heard and answered, Psa 141:1, Psa 141:2. David cried unto God. His crying denotes fervency in prayer; he prayed as one in earnest. His crying to God denotes faith and fixedness in prayer. And what did he desire as the success of his prayer? 1. That God would take cognizance of it: &quot;Give ear to my voice; let me have a gracious audience.&quot; Those that cry in prayer may hope to be heard in prayer, not for their loudness, but their liveliness. 2. That he would visit him upon it: Make haste unto me. Those that know how to value God&#039;s gracious presence will be importunate for it and humbly impatient of delays. He that believes does not make haste, but he that prays may be earnest with God to make haste. 3. That he would be well pleased with him in it, well pleased with his praying and the lifting up of his hands in prayer, which denotes both the elevation and enlargement of his desire and the out-goings of his hope and expectation, the lifting up of the hand signifying the lifting up of the heart, and being used instead of lifting up the sacrifices which were heaved and waved before the Lord. Prayer is a spiritual sacrifice; it is the offering up of the soul, and its best affections, to God. Now he prays that this may be set forth and directed before God as the incense which was daily burnt upon the golden altar, and as the evening sacrifice, which he mentions rather than the morning sacrifice, perhaps because this was an evening prayer, or with an eye to Christ, who, in the evening of the world and in the evening of the day, was to offer up himself a sacrifice of atonement, and establish the spiritual sacrifices of acknowledgement, having abolished all the carnal ordinances of the law. Those that pray in faith may expect it will please God better than an ox or bullock. David was now banished from God&#039;s court, and could not attend the sacrifice and incense, and therefore begs that his prayer might be instead of them. Note, Prayer is of a sweet-smelling savour to God, as incense, which yet has no savour without fire; nor has prayer without the fire of holy love and fervour.
II. David was in fear of sin, and he begs of God that he might be kept from sin, knowing that his prayers would not be accepted unless he took care to watch against sin. We must be as earnest for God&#039;s grace in us as for his favour towards us. 1. He prays that he might not be surprised into any sinful words (Psa 141:3): &quot;Set a watch, O Lord! before my mouth, and, nature having made my lips to be a door to my words, let grace keep that door, that no word may be suffered to go out which may in any way tend to the dishonour of God or the hurt of others.&quot; Good men know the evil of tongue-sins, and how prone they are to them (when enemies are provoking we are in danger of carrying our resentment too far, and of speaking unadvisedly, as Moses did, though the meekest of men), and therefore they are earnest with God to prevent their speaking amiss, as knowing that no watchfulness or resolution of their own is sufficient for the governing of their tongues, much less of their hearts, without the special grace of God. We must keep our mouths as with a bridle; but that will not serve: we must pray to God to keep them. Nehemiah prayed to the Lord when he set a watch, and so must we, for without him the watchman walketh but in vain. 2. That he might not be inclined to any sinful practices (Psa 141:4): &quot;Incline not my heart to any evil thing; whatever inclination there is in me to sin, let it be not only restrained, but mortified, by divine grace.&quot; The example of those about us, and the provocations of those against us, are apt to stir up and draw out corrupt inclinations. We are ready to do as others do, and to think that if we have received injuries we may return them; and therefore we have need to pray that we may never be left to ourselves to practise any wicked work, either in confederacy with or in opposition to the men that work iniquity. While we live in such an evil world, and carry about with us such evil hearts, we have need to pray that we may neither be drawn in by any allurement nor driven on by any provocation to do any sinful thing. 3. That he might not be ensnared by any sinful pleasures: &quot;Let me not eat of their dainties. Let me not join with them in their feasts and sports, lest thereby I be inveigled into their sins.&quot; Better is a dinner of herbs, out of the way of temptation, than a stalled ox in it. Sinners pretend to find dainties in sin. Stolen waters are sweet; forbidden fruit is pleasant to the eye. But those that consider how soon the dainties of sin will turn into wormwood and gall, how certainly it will, at last, bite like a serpent and sting like an adder, will dread those dainties, and pray to God by his providence to take them out of their sight, and by his grace to turn them against them. Good men will pray even against the sweets of sin.</p>

<p>Here we have,
I. A solemn preface, to introduce the caution which follows, Pro 5:1, Pro 5:2. Solomon here addresses himself to his son, that is, to all young men, as unto his children, whom he has an affection for and some influence upon. In God&#039;s name, he demands attention; for he writes by divine inspiration, and is a prophet, though he begins not with, Thus saith the Lord. &quot;Attend, and bow thy ear; not only hear what is said, and read what is written, but apply thy mind to it and consider it diligently.&quot; To gain attention he urges, 1. The excellency of his discourse: &quot;It is my wisdom, my understanding; if I undertake to teach thee wisdom I cannot prescribe any thing to be more properly called so; moral philosophy is my philosophy, and that which is to be learned in my school.&quot; 2. The usefulness of it: &quot;Attend to what I say,&quot; (1.) &quot;That thou mayest act wisely - that thou mayest regard discretion.&quot; Solomon&#039;s lectures are not designed to fill our heads with notions, with matters of nice speculation, or doubtful disputation, but to guide us in the government of ourselves, that we may act prudently, so as becomes us and so as will be for our true interest. (2.) &quot;That thou mayest speak wisely - that thy lips may keep knowledge, and thou mayest have it ready at thy tongue&#039;s end&quot; (as we say), &quot;for the benefit of those with whom thou dost converse.&quot; The priest&#039;s lips are said to keep knowledge (Mal 2:7); but those that are ready and mighty in the scriptures may not only in their devotions, but in their discourses, be spiritual priests.
II. The caution itself, and that is to abstain from fleshly lusts, from adultery, fornication, and all uncleanness. Some apply this figuratively, and by the adulterous woman here understand idolatry, or false doctrine, which tends to debauch men&#039;s minds and manners, or the sensual appetite, to which it may as fitly as any thing be applied; but the primary scope of it is plainly to warn us against seventh-commandment sins, which youth is so prone to, the temptations to which are so violent, the examples of which are so many, and which, where admitted, are so destructive to all the seeds of virtue in the soul that it is not strange that Solomon&#039;s cautions against it are so very pressing and so often repeated. Solomon here, as a faithful watchman, gives fair warning to all, as they regard their lives and comforts, to dread this sin, for it will certainly be their ruin. Two things we are here warned to take heed of: -
1. That we do not listen to the charms of this sin. It is true the lips of a strange woman drop as a honey-comb (Pro 5:3); the pleasures of fleshly lust are very tempting (like the wine that gives its colour in the cup and moves itself aright); its mouth, the kisses of its mouth, the words of its mouth, are smoother than oil, that the poisonous pill may go down glibly and there may be no suspicion of harm in it. But consider, (1.) How fatal the consequences will be. What fruit will the sinner have of his honey and oil when the end will be, [1.] The terrors of conscience: It is bitter as wormwood, Pro 5:4. What was luscious in the mouth rises in the stomach and turns sour there; it cuts, in the reflection, like a two-edged sword; take it which way you will, it wounds. Solomon could speak by experience, Ecc 7:26. [2.] The torments of hell. If some that have been guilty of this sin have repented and been saved, yet the direct tendency of the sin is to destruction of body and soul; the feet of it go down to death, nay, they take hold on hell, to pull it to the sinner, as if the damnations slumbered too long, Pro 5:5. Those that are entangled in this sin should be reminded that there is but a step between them and hell, and that they are ready to drop into it. (2.) Consider how false the charms are. The adulteress flatters and speaks fair, her words are honey and oil, but she will deceive those that hearken to her: Her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them; she often changes her disguise, and puts on a great variety of false colours, because, if she be rightly known, she is certainly hated. Proteus-like, she puts on many shapes, that she may keep in with those whom she has a design upon. And what does she aim at with all this art and management? Nothing but to keep them from pondering the path of life, for she knows that, if they once come to do that, she shall certainly lose them. Those are ignorant of Satan&#039;s devices who do not understand that the great thing he drives at in all his temptations is, [1.] To keep them from choosing the path of life, to prevent them from being religious and from going to heaven, that, being himself shut out from happiness, he may keep them out from it. [2.] In order hereunto, to keep them from pondering the path of life, from considering how reasonable it is that they should walk in that path, and how much it will be for their advantage. Be it observed, to the honour of religion, that it certainly gains its point with all those that will but allow themselves the liberty of a serious thought and will weigh things impartially in an even balance, and that the devil has no way of securing men in his interests but by diverting them with continual amusements of one kind or another from the calm and sober consideration of the things that belong to their peace. And uncleanness is a sin that does as much as any thing blind the understanding, sear the conscience, and keep people from pondering the path of life. Whoredom takes away the heart, Hos 4:11.
2. That we do not approach the borders of this sin, Pro 5:7, Pro 5:8.
(1.) This caution is introduced with a solemn preface: &quot;Hear me now therefore, O you children! whoever you are that read or hear these lines, take notice of what I say, and mix faith with it, treasure it up, and depart not from the words of my mouth, as those will do that hearken to the words of the strange woman. Do not only receive what I say, for the present merely, but cleave to it, and let it be ready to thee, and of force with thee, when thou art most violently assaulted by the temptation.&quot;
(2.) The caution itself is very pressing: &quot;Remove thy way far from her; if thy way should happen to lie near her, and thou shouldst have a fair pretence of being led by business within the reach of her charms, yet change thy way, and alter the course of it, rather than expose thyself to danger; come not nigh the door of her house; go on the other side of the street, nay, go through some other street, though it be about.&quot; This intimates, [1.] That we ought to have a very great dread and detestation of the sin. We must fear it as we would a place infected with the plague; we must loathe it as the odour of carrion, that we will not come near. Then we are likely to preserve our purity when we conceive a rooted antipathy to all fleshly lusts. [2.] That we ought industriously to avoid every thing that may be an occasion of this sin or a step towards it. Those that would be kept from harm must keep out of harm&#039;s way. Such tinder there is in the corrupt nature that it is madness, upon any pretence whatsoever, to come near the sparks. If we thrust ourselves into temptation, we mocked God when we prayed, Lead us not into temptation. [3.] That we ought to be jealous over ourselves with a godly jealousy, and not to be so confident of the strength of our own resolutions as to venture upon the brink of sin, with a promise to ourselves that hitherto we will come and no further. [4.] That whatever has become a snare to us and an occasion of sin, though it be as a right eye and a right hand, we must pluck it out, cut it off, and cast it from us, must part with that which is dearest to us rather than hazard our own souls; this is our Saviour&#039;s command, Mat 5:28-30.
(3.) The arguments which Solomon here uses to enforce this caution are taken from the same topic with those before, the many mischiefs which attend this sin. [1.] It blasts the reputation. &quot;Thou wilt give thy honour unto others (Pro 5:9); thou wilt lose it thyself; thou wilt put into the hand of each of thy neighbours a stone to throw at thee, for they will all, with good reason, cry shame on thee, will despise thee, and trample on thee, as a foolish men.&quot; Whoredom is a sin that makes men contemptible and base, and no man of sense or virtue will care to keep company with one that keeps company with harlots. [2.] It wastes the time, gives the years, the years of youth, the flower of men&#039;s time, unto the cruel, &quot;that base lust of thine, which with the utmost cruelty wars against the soul, that base harlot which pretends an affection for thee, but really hunts for the precious life.&quot; Those years that should be given to the honour of a gracious God are spent in the service of a cruel sin. [3.] It ruins the estate (Pro 5:10): &quot;Strangers will be filled with thy wealth, which thou art but entrusted with as a steward for thy family; and the fruit of thy labours, which should be provision for thy own house, will be in the house of a stranger, that neither has right to it nor will ever thank thee for it.&quot; [4.] It is destructive to the health, and shortens men&#039;s days: Thy flesh and thy body will be consumed by it, Pro 5:11. The lusts of uncleanness not only war against the soul, which the sinner neglects and is in no care about, but they war against the body too, which he is so indulgent of and is in such care to please and pamper, such deceitful, such foolish, such hurtful lusts are they. Those that give themselves to work uncleanness with greediness waste their strength, throw themselves into weakness, and often have their bodies filled with loathsome distempers, by which the number of their months is cut off in the midst and they fall unpitied sacrifices to a cruel lust. [5.] It will fill the mind with horror, if ever conscience be awakened. &quot;Though thou art merry now, sporting thyself in thy own deceivings, yet thou wilt certainly mourn at the last, Pro 5:11. Thou art all this while making work for repentance, and laying up matter for vexation and torment in the reflection, when the sin is set before thee in its own colours.&quot; Sooner or later it will bring sorrow, either when the soul is humbled and brought to repentance or when the flesh and body are consumed, either by sickness, when conscience flies in the sinner&#039;s face, or by the grave; when the body is rotting there, the soul is racking in the torments of hell, where the worm dies not, and &quot;Son, remember,&quot; is the constant peal [plea?]. Solomon here brings in the convinced sinner reproaching himself, and aggravating his own folly. He will then most bitterly lament it. First, That because he hated to be reformed he therefore hated to be informed, and could not endure either to be taught his duty (How have I hated not only the discipline of being instructed, but the instruction itself, though all true and good!) or to be told of his faults - My heart despised reproof, Pro 5:12. He cannot but own that those who had the charge of him, parents, ministers, had done their part; they had been his teachers; they had instructed him, had given him good counsel and fair warning (Pro 5:13); but to his own shame and confusion does he speak it, and therein justifies God in all the miseries that were brought upon him, he had not obeyed their voice, for indeed he never inclined his ear to those that instructed him, never minded what they said nor admitted the impressions of it. Note, Those who have had a good education and do not live up to it will have a great deal to answer for another day; and those who will not now remember what they were taught, to conform themselves to it, will be made to remember it as an aggravation of their sin, and consequently of their ruin. Secondly, That by the frequent acts of sin the habits of it were so rooted and confirmed that his heart was fully set in him to commit it (Pro 5:14): I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. When he came into the synagogue, or into the courts of the temple, to worship God with other Israelites, his unclean heart was full of wanton thoughts and desires and his eyes of adultery. Reverence of the place and company, and of the work that was doing, could not restrain him, but he was almost as wicked and vile there as any where. No sin will appear more frightful to an awakened conscience than the profanation of holy things; nor will any aggravation of sin render it more exceedingly sinful than the place we are honoured with in the congregation and assembly, and the advantages we enjoy thereby. Zimri and Cozbi avowed their villany in the sight of Moses and all the congregation (Num 25:6), and heart-adultery is as open to God, and must needs be most offensive to him, when we draw nigh to him in religious exercises. I was in all evil in defiance of the magistrates and judges, and their assemblies; so some understand it. Others refer it to the evil of punishment, not to the evil of sin: &quot;I was made an example, a spectacle to the world. I was under almost all God&#039;s sore judgments in the midst of the congregation of Israel, set up for a mark. I stood up and cried in the congregation,&quot; Job 30:28. Let that be avoided which will be thus rued at last.</p>

<p>Solomon, having shown the benefit of wisdom, and of what great advantage it is to us in the management of our affairs, here shows the mischief of folly and how it exposes men, which perhaps comes in as a reflection upon those rulers who set folly in great dignity.
I. Fools talk a great deal to no purpose, and they show their folly as much by the multitude, impertinence, and mischievousness of their words, as by any thing; whereas the words of a wise man&#039;s mouth are gracious, are grace, manifest grace in his heart and minister grace to the hearers, are good, and such as become him, and do good to all about him, the lips of a fool not only expose him to reproach and make him ridiculous, but will swallow up himself and bring him to ruin, by provoking the government to take cognizance of his seditious talk and call him to an account for it. Adonijah foolishly spoke against his own life, Kg1 2:23. Many a man has been sunk by having his own tongue fall upon him, Psa 64:8. See what a fool&#039;s talk is. 1. It takes rise from his own weakness and wickedness: The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, the foolishness bound up in his heart, that is the corrupt spring out of which all these polluted streams flow, the evil treasure out of which evil things are brought. As soon as he begins to speak you may perceive his folly; at the very first he talks idly, and passionately, and like himself. 2. It rises up to fury, and tends to the hurt and injury of others: The end of his talk, the end it comes to, is madness. He will presently talk himself into an indecent heat, and break out into the wild extravagancies of a distracted man. The end he aims at is mischief; as, at first, he appeared to have little government of himself, so, at last, it appears he has a great deal of malice to his neighbours; that root of bitterness bears gall and wormwood. Note, It is not strange if those that begin foolishly end madly; for an ungoverned tongue, the more liberty is allowed, grows the more violent. 3. It is all the same over and over (Ecc 10:14): A fool also is full of words, a passionate fool especially, that runs on endlessly and never knows when to leave off. He will have the last word, though it be but the same with that which was the first. What is wanting in the weight and strength of his words he endeavours in vain to make up in the number of them; and they must be repeated, because otherwise there is nothing in them to make them regarded. Note, Many who are empty of sense are full of words; and the least solid are the most noisy. The following words may be taken either, (1.) As checking him for his vainglorious boasting in the multitude of his words, what he will do and what he will have, not considering that which every body knows that a man cannot tell what shall be in his own time, while he lives (Pro 27:1), much less can one tell what shall be after him, when he is dead and gone. Would we duly consider our own ignorance of, and uncertainty about, future events, it would cut off a great many of the idle words we foolishly multiply. Or, (2.) As mocking him for his tautologies. He is full of words, for if he do but speak the most trite and common thing, a man cannot tell what shall be, because he loves to hear himself talk, he will say it again, what shall be after him who can tell him? like Battus in Ovid:
- Sub illis
Montibus (inquit) erant, et erant sub montibus illis -
Under those mountains were they,
They were under those mountains, I say -
whence vain repetitions are called Battologeō, Mat 6:7.
II. Fools toil a great deal to no purpose (Ecc 10:15); The labour of the foolish, to accomplish their designs, wearies every one of them. 1. They weary themselves in that labour which is very foolish and absurd. All their labour is for the world and the body, and the meat that perishes, and in this labour they spend their strength, and exhaust their spirits, and weary themselves for very vanity, Hab 2:13; Isa 55:2. They choose that service which is perfect drudgery rather than that which is perfect liberty. 2. That labour which is necessary, and would be profitable, and might be gone through with ease, wearies them, because they go about it awkwardly and foolishly, and so make their business a toil to them, which, if they applied themselves to it prudently, would be a pleasure to them. Many complain of the labours of religion as grievous, which they would have no reason to complain of if the exercises of Christian piety were always under the direction of Christian prudence. The foolish tire themselves in endless pursuits, and never bring any thing to pass, because they know not how to go to the city, that is, because they have not capacity to apprehend the plainest thing, such as the entrance into a great city is, where one would think it were impossible for a man to miss his road. Men&#039;s imprudent management of their business robs them both of the comfort and of the benefit of it. But it is the excellency of the way to the heavenly city that it is a high-way, in which the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err (Isa 35:8); yet sinful folly makes men miss that way.</p>

<p>Here God proceeds in his controversy with his people. Observe,
I. The ground of his controversy. It was for sin that God contended with them; if they vex themselves, let them look a little further and they will see that they must thank themselves: Woe unto their souls! For they have rewarded evil unto themselves. Alas for their souls! (so it may be read, in a way of lamentation), for they have procured evil to themselves, Isa 3:9. Note, The condition of sinners is woeful and very deplorable. Note, also, It is the soul that is damaged and endangered by sin. Sinners may prosper in their outward estates, and yet at the same time there may be a woe to their souls. Note, further, Whatever evils befals sinners it is of their own procuring, Jer 2:19. That which is here charged upon then is, 1. That the shame which should have restrained them from their sins was quite thrown off and they had grown impudent, Isa 3:9. This hardens men against repentance, and ripens them for ruin, as much as anything: The show of their countenance doth witness against them that their minds are vain, and lewd, and malicious; their eyes declare plainly that they cannot cease from sin, Pe2 2:14. One may look them in the face and guess at the desperate wickedness that there is in their hearts: They declare their sin as Sodom, so impetuous, so imperious, are their lusts, and so impatient of the least check, and so perfectly are all the remaining sparks of virtue extinguished in them. The Sodomites declared their sin, not only by the exceeding greatness of it (Gen 13:13), so that it cried to heaven (Gen 18:20), but by their shameless owning of that which was most shameful (Gen 19:5); and thus Judah and Jerusalem did: they were so far from hiding it that they gloried in it, in the bold attempts they made upon virtue, and the victory they gained over their own convictions. They had a whore&#039;s forehead (Jer 3:3) and could not blush, Jer 6:15. Note, Those that have grown impudent in sin are ripe for ruin. Those that are past shame (we say) are past grace, and then past hope. 2. That their guides, who should direct them in the right way, put them out of the way (Isa 3:12): &quot;Those who lead thee (the princes, priests, and prophets) mislead thee; they cause thee to err.&quot; Either they preached to them that which was false and corrupt, or, if they preached that which was true and good, they contradicted it by their practices, and the people would soon follow a bad example than a good exhortation. Thus they destroyed the ways of their paths, pulling down with one hand what they built up with the other. Que te beatificant - Those that call thee blessed cause thee to err; so some read it. Their priests applauded them, as if nothing were amiss among them, cried Peace, peace, to them, as if they were in no danger; and thus they caused them to go on in their errors. 3. That their judges, who should have patronized and protected the oppressed, were themselves the greatest oppressors, Isa 3:14, Isa 3:15. The elders of the people, and the princes, who had learning and could not but know better things, who had great estates and were not under the temptation of necessity to encroach upon those about them, and who were men of honour and should have scorned to do a base thing, yet they have eaten up the vineyard. God&#039;s vineyard, which they were appointed to be the dressers and keepers of, they burnt (so the word signifies); they did as ill by it as its worst enemies could do, Psa 80:16. Or the vineyards of the poor they wrested out of their possession, as Jezebel did Naboth&#039;s, or devoured the fruits of them, fed their lusts with that which should have been the necessary food of indigent families; the spoil of the poor was hoarded up in their houses; when God came to search for stolen goods there he found it, and it was a witness against them. It was to be had, and they might have made restitution, but would not. God reasons with these great men (Isa 3:15): &quot;What mean you, that you beat my people into pieces? What cause have you for it? What good does it do you?&quot; Or, &quot;What hurt have they done you? Do you think you had power given you for such a purpose as this?&quot; Note, There is nothing more unaccountable, and yet nothing which must more certainly be accounted for, than the injuries and abuses that are done to God&#039;s people by their persecutors and oppressors. &quot;You grind the faces of the poor; you put them to as much pain and terror as if they were ground in a mill, and as certainly reduce them to dust by one act of oppression after another.&quot; Or, &quot;Their faces are bruised and crushed with the blows you have given them; you have not only ruined their estates, but have given them personal abuses.&quot; Our Lord Jesus was smitten on the face, Mat 26:67.
II. The management of this controversy. 1. God himself is the prosecutor (Isa 3:13): The Lord stands up to plead, or he sets himself to debate the matter, and he stands to judge the people, to judge for those that were oppressed and abused; and he will enter into judgment with the princes, Isa 3:14. Note, The greatest of men cannot exempt or secure themselves from the scrutiny and sentence of God&#039;s judgment, nor demur to the jurisdiction of the court of heaven. 2. The indictment is proved by the notorious evidence of the fact: &quot;Look upon the oppressors, and the show of their countenance witnesses against them (Isa 3:9); look upon the oppressed, and you see how their faces are battered and abused,&quot; Isa 3:15. 3. The controversy is already begun in the change of the ministry. To punish those that had abused their power to bad purposes God sets those over them that had not sense to use their power to any good purposes: Children are their oppressors, and women rule over them (Isa 3:12), men that have as weak judgments and strong passions as women and children: this was their sin, that their rulers were such, and it became a judgment upon them.
III. The distinction that shall be made between particular persons, in the prosecution of this controversy (Isa 3:10, Isa 3:11): Say to the righteous, It shall be well with thee. Woe to the wicked; it shall be ill with him. He had said (Isa 3:9), they have rewarded evil to themselves, in proof of which he here shows that God will render to every man according to his works. Had they been righteous, it would have been well with them; but, if it be ill with them, it is because they are wicked and will be so. Thus God stated the matter to Cain, to convince him that he had no reason to be angry, Gen 4:7. Or it may be taken thus: God is threatening national judgments, which will ruin the public interests. Now, 1. Some good people might fear that they should be involved in that ruin, and therefore God bids the prophets comfort them against those fears: &quot;Whatever becomes of the unrighteous nation, let the righteous man know that he shall not be lost in the crowd of sinners; the Judge of all the earth will not slay the righteous with the wicked (Gen 18:25); no, assure him, in God&#039;s name, that it shall be well with him. The property of the trouble shall be altered to him, and he shall be hidden in the day of the Lord&#039;s anger. He shall have divine supports and comforts, which shall abound as afflictions abound, and so it shall be well with him.&quot; When the whole stay of bread is taken away, yet in the day of famine the righteous shall be satisfied; they shall eat the fruit of their doings - they shall have the testimony of their consciences for them that they kept themselves pure from the common iniquity, and therefore the common calamity is not the same thing to them that it is to others; they brought no fuel to the flame, and therefore are not themselves fuel for it. 2. Some wicked people might hope that they should escape that ruin, and therefore God bids the prophets shake their vain hopes: &quot;Woe to the wicked; it shall be ill with him, Isa 3:11. To him the judgments shall have sting, and there shall be wormwood and gall in the affliction and misery.&quot; There is a woe to wicked people, and, though they may think to shelter themselves from public judgments, yet it shall be ill with them; it will grow worse and worse with them if they repent not, and the worst of all will be at last; for the reward of their hands shall be given them, in the day when every man shall receive according to the things done in the body.</p>