The scope of this chapter is to prosecute the
exhortation given to Israel in the close of the foregoing chapter
to prepare to meet their God; the prophet here tells them, I. What
preparation they must make; they must "seek the Lord," and not seek
any more to idols (
1 Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. 2 The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up. 3 For thus saith the Lord God; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave a hundred, and that which went forth by a hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel.
This chapter begins, as those two next
foregoing began, with, Hear this word. Where God has a mouth
to speak we must have an ear to hear; it is our duty, it is our
interest, yet so stupid are most men that they need to be again and
again called upon to hear the word of the Lord, to give
audience, to give attention. Hear this word. this convincing
awakening word must be heard and heeded, as well as words of
comfort and peace; the word that is taken up against us, as well as
that which makes for us; for, whether we hear or forbear, the word
of God shall take effect, and not a tittle of it shall fall to the
ground. It is the word which I take up—not the prophet
only, but the God that sent him. It is the word that the Lord
has spoken,
4 For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live: 5 But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beer-sheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought. 6 Seek the Lord, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel. 7 Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth, 8 Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name: 9 That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. 10 They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly. 11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. 12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. 13 Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time. 14 Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. 15 Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.
This is a message from God to the house of Israel, in which,
I. They are told of their faults, that they might see what occasion there was for them to repent and reform, and that, when they were called to return, they might not need to ask, Wherein shall we return?
1. God tells them, in general (
2. He specifies some of these mighty sins.
(1.) They corrupted the worship of God, and turned to idols; this
is implied
II. They are told of their danger and what
judgments they lay exposed to for their sins. 1. The places of
their idolatry are in danger of being ruined in the first place,
III. They are told their duty, and have great encouragement to set about it in good earnest, and good reason. The duties here prescribed to them are godliness and honesty, seriousness in their applications to God and justice in their dealings with men; and each of these is here pressed upon them with proper arguments to enforce the exhortation.
1. They are here exhorted to be sincere and
devout in their addresses to God,
2. They are here exhorted to be honest and
just in their dealings with men,
16 Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing. 17 And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord. 18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. 19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. 20 Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?
Here is, I. A very terrible threatening of
destruction approaching,
II. A just and severe reproof to those who
made light of these threatenings, and impudently bade defiance to
the justice of God and his judgments,
21 I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. 22 Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. 23 Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. 24 But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. 25 Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? 26 But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves. 27 Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts.
The scope of these verses is to show how little God valued their shows of devotion, nay, how much he detested them, while they went on in their sins. Observe,
I. How unpleasing, nay, how displeasing,
their hypocritical services were to God. They had their
feast-days at Bethel, in imitation of those at Jerusalem, in
which they pretended to rejoice before God. They had their
solemn assemblies for religious worship, in which they put
on the gravity of those who come before God as his people come,
and sit before him as his people sit. They offered to God
burnt-offerings, to the honour of God, together with the
meat-offerings which by the law were to be offered with
them; they offered the peace-offerings, to implore the
favour of God, and they offered them of the fat beasts that
they had,
II. What it was that he required in order
to the acceptableness of their sacrifices and without which no
sacrifice would be acceptable (
III. What little stress God had laid upon
the law of sacrifices, though it was his own law, in comparison
with the moral precepts (
IV. What little reason they had to expect
that their sacrifices should be acceptable to God, when they and
their fathers had been all along addicted to the worship of other
gods. So some take
V. What punishment God would inflict upon
them for their persisting in idolatry (