common decencies of society were grossly outraged by their indiscriminate sensuality.

These iniquities of the Israelites were greatly aggravated by the recollection of God's peculiar favours to them and to their fathers, setting in the strongest point of view the baseness of their ingratitude. Those favours are thus recited: "Yet destroyed I the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath. Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite. And I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for Nazarites. Is it not even thus, O ye children of Israel? saith the Lord." "But ye have ill requited my loving-kindness; ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink; and commanded the prophets, saying, prophesy not. What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold, a cry." This was grievous to their affectionate sympathetic saviour who hath no pleasure in the death of him

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that dieth, and who here represents himself as weighed down under the load of their iniquities. "Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves." He therefore threatens to punish them; assuring them however in his long-suffering tenderness, that this necessary punishment was for their good, and occasioned by his love towards them. "Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O! children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, you only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." My affection towards you is too intimately connected with your real happiness to suffer me to connive at your sins. It is a mark of my signal displeasure against any man to allow his iniquities to pass unpunished. But I love you, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. The prophet then proceeds in an animated strain of interrogation, to vindicate these his threatnings, by showing that they were not his own private unauthorized sentiments, but the result of a direct communication from God, and therefore not to be disregarded with impunity. "Can two walk together except they be agreed?"* Can my threatnings and God's

* This verse is commonly quoted to prove the necessity of that change of character in a man, which must take place before he can live in habitual communion with God, walking

judgments correspond, without any previous communication and accordance upon the subject? Surely not. And if these words of mine, be from God, then they are not spoken without good cause. As a lion will not roar in the forest when he hath no prey; nor a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing; neither would the Lord have instructed me thus to speak, if he had seen no cause for it in Israel. And if these words of mine be from God, then they are not merely accidental expressions without design. As a bird is not taken in a snare where there is no snare laid, but as the fact of its being taken proves design in laying the snare for it, so God's threatnings are not merely passing words without any design in them, but they result from the deliberate intention and counsel of God. And if these words of mine be from God, then they are not to be disregarded: shall the people be afraid when a war trumpet is blown in the city? And shall they not be afraid when a warning from the Lord of Hosts is sounded in their ears? For the evils, the natural calamities, which befall any people or city, are not to be attributed to the blind operation of second causes: they are of the Lord's own immediate infliction. "Shall there be evil in a

with him as Enoch did. The words may be so accommodated, but the context seems to require a different primary interpretation.

city and the Lord hath not done it?" Surely however, the righteous Lord God will inflict no evil, will bring no calamity, without giving timely warning to his people. He revealeth his design to his servants the Prophets, setting them as watchmen to the house of Israel, to hear the word at his mouth and warn the people from him; to the end that whosoever, hearing the trumpet and seeing the sword coming upon the land, would take warning and turn from his evil way, should thereby be preserved from the impending ruin. The warning hath been given, who can but attend to it? The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy? This last clause declares plainly the Prophet's mind in the whole passage, and supplies us therefore with the best key to the entire interpretation.

The heathen enemies of Israel, the Philistines and Egyptians, are then summoned to assemble themselves upon the mountains of Samaria, to behold the tumults, the oppression, the violence and injustice which prevailed among the Israelites; and to be the instruments of executing against them the righteous judgments of God. Yet a remnant would be saved, and saved in the hour of extremest need, when their situation appeared desperate; even as a shepherd taketh out of the mouth of a devouring lion, two legs, or a piece of an ear, of a sheep. The nation

generally shall suffer; the idolatrous altars of Bethel shall be cast down to the ground; the rich and proud ones of the earth with their monuments of luxury, their winter houses, and their summer houses, and their houses of ivory, shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end, saith the Lord. In the following chapter, further and even more animated reproofs are addressed to Israel. "Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan that are in the mountain of Samaria; which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, bring and let us drink." Bashan was one of those nations which God smote and subdued under his people Israel. He smote great kings, Sihon king of the Amorites and Og the king of Bashan, and gave their land for an heritage unto Israel his servant, for his mercy endureth for ever. The cattle of Bashan were remarkable for their size, fatness, and wantonness; and the luxurious, pampered and profligate nobles and magistrates of Israel, are addressed by the prophet as these cattle.* Concerning these the Lord God had sworn by his holiness that, even as helpless fishes are drawn out of the water with hooks, so should they and their posterity be taken away. The wall of their city should be broken down in

* The murderers of Christ are called strong bulls of Bashan, Ps. xxii. 12.