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Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary
on the Whole Bible
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Matthew Henry |
H A B A K K U K.
CHAP. I.
In this chapter,
I. The prophet complains to God of the violence done by the abuse of
the sword of justice among his own people and the hardships thereby put
upon many good people,
II. God by him foretels the punishment of that abuse of power by the
sword of war, and the desolations which the army of the Chaldeans
should make upon them,
III. Then the prophet complains of that too, and is grieved that the
Chaldeans prevail so far
(ver. 12-17),
so that he scarcely knows which is more to be lamented, the sin or the
punishment of it, for in both many harmless good people are very great
sufferers. It is well that there is a day of judgment, and a future
state, before us, in which it shall be eternally well with all the
righteous, and with them only, and ill with all the wicked, and them
only; so the present seeming disorders of Providence shall be set to
rights, and there will remain no matter of complaint whatsoever.
| The Sins of the People. | B. C. 600. |
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1 The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.
2 O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even
cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!
3 Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold
grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there
are that raise up strife and contention.
4 Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go
forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore
wrong judgment proceedeth.
We are told no more in the title of this book (which we have,
v. 1)
than that the penman was a prophet, a man divinely inspired and
commissioned, which is enough (if that be so, we need not ask
concerning his tribe or family, or the place of his birth), and that
the book itself is the burden which he saw; he was as
sure of the truth of it as if he had seen it with his bodily eyes
already accomplished. Here, in these verses, the prophet sadly laments
the iniquity of the times, as one sensibly touched with grief for the
lamentable decay of religion and righteousness. It is a very melancholy
complaint which he here makes to God,
1. That no man could call what he had his own; but, in defiance of the
most sacred laws of property and equity, he that had power on his side
had what he had a mind to, though he had no right on his side: The land
was full of violence, as the old world was,
The prophet cries out of violence
(v. 2),
iniquity and grievance, spoil and violence. In
families and among relations, in neighbour-hoods and among friends, in
commerce and in courts of law, every thing was carried with a high
hand, and no man made any scruple of doing wrong to his neighbour, so
that he could but make a good hand of it for himself. It does not
appear that the prophet himself had any great wrong done him (in losing
times it fared best with those that had nothing to lose), but it
grieved him to see other people wronged, and he could not but mingle
his tears with those of the oppressed. Note, Doing wrong to harmless
people, as it is an iniquity in itself, so it is a great grievance to
all that are concerned for God’s Jerusalem, who sigh and cry for
abominations of this kind. He complains
(v. 4)
that the wicked doth compass about the righteous. One honest
man, one honest cause, shall have enemies besetting it on every side;
many wicked men, in confederacy against it, run it down; nay, one
wicked man (for it is singular) with so many various arts of mischief
sets upon a righteous man, that he perfectly besets him.
2. That the kingdom was broken into parties and factions that were
continually biting and devouring one another. This is a lamentation to
all the sons of peace: There are that raise up strife and
contention
(v. 3),
that foment divisions, widen breaches, incense men against one another,
and sow discord among brethren, by doing the work of him that is the
accuser of the brethren. Strifes and contentions that have been laid
asleep, and begun to be forgotten, they awake, and industriously raise
up again, and blow up the sparks that were hidden under the embers.
And, if blessed are the peace-makers, cursed are such
peace-breakers, that make parties, and so make mischief that spreads
further, and lasts longer, than they can imagine. It is sad to see bad
men warming their hands at those flames which are devouring all that is
good in a nation, and stirring up the fire too.
3. That the torrent of violence and strife ran so strongly as to bid
defiance to the restraints and regulations of laws and the
administration of justice,
v. 4.
Because God did not appear against them, nobody else would;
therefore the law is slacked, is silent; it breathes not; its
pulse beats not (so, it is said, the word signifies); it intermits,
and judgment does not go forth as it should; no cognizance is
taken of those crimes, no justice done upon the criminals; nay,
wrong judgment proceeds; if appeals be made to the courts of
equity, the righteous shall be condemned and the wicked justified, so
that the remedy proves the worst disease. The legislative power takes
no care to supply the deficiencies of the law for the obviating of
those growing threatening mischiefs; the executive power takes no care
to answer the good intentions of the laws that are made; the stream of
justice is dried up by violence, and has not its free course.
4. That all this was open and public, and impudently avowed; it was
barefaced. The prophet complains that this iniquity was shown him; he
beheld it which way soever he turned his eyes, nor could he look
off it: Spoiling and violence are before me. Note, The abounding
of wickedness in a nation is a very great eye-sore to good people, and,
if they did not see it, they could not believe it to be so bad as it
is. Solomon often complains of the vexation of this kind which he
saw under the sun; and the prophet would therefore gladly turn
hermit, that he might not see it,
But then we must needs go out of the world, which
there-fore we should long to do, that we may remove to that
world where holiness and love reign eternally, and no spoiling and
violence shall be before us.
5. That he complained of this to God, but could not obtain a redress of
those grievances: “Lord,” says he, “why dost thou show me
iniquity? Why hast thou cast my lot in a time and place when and
where it is to be seen, and why do I continue to sojourn in
Mesech and Kedar? I cry to thee of this violence; I cry
aloud; I have cried long; but thou wilt not hear, thou wilt not
save; thou dost not take vengeance on the oppressors, nor do
justice to the oppressed, as if thy arm were shortened or thy ear
heavy.” When God seems to connive at the wickedness of the wicked, nay,
and to countenance it, by suffering them to prosper in their
wickedness, it shocks the faith of good men, and proves a sore
temptation to them to say, We have cleansed our hearts in vain
and hardens those in their impiety who say, God has forsaken the
earth. We must not think it strange if wickedness be suffered to
prevail far and prosper long. God has reasons, and we are sure they are
good reasons, both for the reprieves of bad men and the rebukes of good
men; and therefore, though we plead with him, and humbly expostulate
concerning his judgments, yet we must say, “He is wise, and righteous,
and good, in all,” and must believe the day will come, though it may be
long deferred, when the cry of sin will be heard against those that do
wrong and the cry of prayer for those that suffer it.
| Judgment Predicted. | B. C. 600. |
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5 Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder
marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye
will not believe, though it be told you.
6 For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty
nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to
possess the dwelling-places that are not theirs.
7 They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their
dignity shall proceed of themselves.
8 Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more
fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread
themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall
fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.
9 They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up
as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the
sand.
10 And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be
a scorn unto them: they shall deride every strong hold; for they
shall heap dust, and take it.
11 Then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, and
offend, imputing this his power unto his god.
We have here an answer to the prophet’s complaint, giving him assurance
that, though God bore long, he would not bear always with this
provoking people; for the day of vengeance was in his heart, and he
must tell them so, that they might by repentance and reformation turn
away the judgment they were threatened with.
I. The preamble to the sentence is very awful
(v. 5):
Behold, you among the heathen, and regard. Since they will not
be brought to repentance by the long-suffering of God, he will take
another course with them. No resentments are so keen, so deep, as those
of abused patience. The Lord will inflict upon them,
1. A public punishment, which shall be beheld and regarded among the
heathen, which the neighbouring nations shall take notice of and stand
amazed at; see
This will aggravate the desolations of Israel, that they will thereby
be made a spectacle to the world.
2. An amazing punishment, so strange and surprising, and so much out of
the common road of Providence, that it shall not be paralleled among
the heathen, shall be sorer and heavier than what God has usually
inflicted upon the nations that know him not; nay, it shall not be
credited even by those that had the prediction of it from God before it
comes, or the report of it from those that were eye-witnesses of it
when it comes: You will not believe it, though it be told you;
it will be thought incredible that so many judgments should combine in
one, and every circumstance so strangely concur to enforce and
aggravate it, that so great and potent a nation should be so reduced
and broken, and that God should deal so severely with a people that had
been taken into the bond of the covenant and that he had done so much
for. The punishment of God’s professing people cannot but be the
astonishment of all about them.
3. A speedy punishment: “I will work a work in your days, now
quickly; this generation shall not pass till the judgment threatened be
accomplished. The sins of former days shall be reckoned for in your
days; for now the measure of the iniquity is full,”
4. It shall be a punishment in which much of the hand of God shall
appear; it shall be a work of his own working, so that all who see it
shall say, This is the Lord’s doing; and it will be found a
fearful thing to fall into his hands; woe to those whom he takes to
task!
5. It shall be such a punishment as will typify the destruction to be
brought upon the despisers of Christ and his gospel, for to that these
words are applied
Behold, you despisers, and wonder, and perish. The ruin of
Jerusalem by the Chaldeans for their idolatry was a figure of their
ruin by the Romans for rejecting Christ and his gospel, and it is a
very marvellous thing, and almost incredible. Is there not a strange
punishment to the workers of iniquity?
II. The sentence itself is very dreadful and particular
(v. 6):
Lo, I raise up the Chaldeans. There were those that raised up a
great deal of strife and contention among them, which was their sin;
and now God will raise up the Chaldeans against them, who shall strive
and contend with them, which shall be their punishment. Note, When
God’s professing people quarrel among themselves, snarl at, and devour
one another, it is just with God to bring the common enemy upon them,
that shall make peace by making a universal devastation. The contending
parties in Jerusalem were inveterate one against another, when the
Romans came and took away their place and nation. The Chaldeans
shall be the instruments of the destruction threatened, and, though
themselves acting unrighteously, they shall execute the
righteousness of the Lord and punish the unrighteousness of Israel.
Now, here we have,
1. A description of the people that shall be raised up against Israel,
to be a scourge to them.
(1.) They are a bitter and hasty nation, cruel and fierce, and
what they do is done with violence and fury; they are precipitate in
their counsels, vehement in their passions, and push on with resolution
in their enterprises; they show no mercy and they spare no pains.
Miserable is the case of those that are given up into the hand of these
cruel ones.
(2.) They are strong, and therefore formidable, and such as there is no
standing before, and yet no fleeing from
(v. 7):
They are terrible and dreadful, famed for the gallant troops
they bring into the field
(v. 8);
their horses are swifter than leopards to charge and pursue, and
more fierce than the evening wolves; and wolves are
observed to be the most ravenous towards the evening, after they have
been kept hungry all day, waiting for that darkness under the
protection of which all the beasts of the forest creep forth,
Ps. civ. 20.
Their squadrons of horse shall be very numerous: “Their horse-men
shall spread themselves a great way, for they shall come from
far, from all parts of their own country, and shall be dispersed
into all parts of the country they invade, to plunder it, and enrich
themselves with the spoil of it. And, in making speed to spoil, they
shall hasten to the prey (as those,
margin), for they shall fly as the eagle towards the
earth when she hastens to eat and strikes at the prey she has an
eye upon.”
(3.) Their own will is a law to them, and, in the fierceness of their
pursuits, they will not be governed by any laws of humanity, equity, or
honour: Their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of
themselves,
v. 7.
Appetite and passion rule them, and not reason nor conscience. Their
principle is, Quicquid libet, licet—My will is my law.
And, Sic volo, sic jubeo; stat pro ratione voluntas–This is my
wish, this is my command; it shall be done because I choose it.
What favour can be hoped for from such an enemy? Note, Those who have
been unjust and unmerciful, among whom the law is slacked, and
judgment doth not go forth, will justly be paid in their own coin
and fall into the hands of those who will deal unjustly and
unmercifully with them.
2. A prophecy of the terrible execution that shall be made by this
terrible nation: They shall march through the breadth of the
earth (so it may be read); for in a little time the Chaldean forces
subdued all the nations in those parts, so that they seemed to have
conquered the world; they overran Asia and part of Africa. Or, through
the breadth of the land of Israel, which was wholly laid waste
by them. It is here foretold,
(1.) That they shall seize all as their own that they can lay their
hands on. They shall come to possess the dwelling-places that are
not theirs, which they have no right to, but that which their sword
gives them.
(2.) That they shall push on the war with all possible vigour: They
shall all come for violence
(v. 9),
not to determine any disputed right by the sword, but, right or wrong,
to enrich themselves with the spoil. Their faces shall sup up as the
east wind; their very countenances shall be so fierce and frightful
that a look will serve to make them masters of all they have a mind to;
so that they shall swallow up all, as the east wind nips and
blasts the buds and flowers. Their faces shall look towards the
east (so some read it); they shall still have an eye to their own
country, which lay eastward from Judea, and all the spoil they seize
they shall remit thither.
(3.) That they shall take a vast number of prisoners, and send them
into Babylon: They shall gather the captivity as the sand for
multitude, and shall never know when they have enough, as long as there
are any more to be had.
(4.) That they shall make nothing of the opposition that is given to
them,
Do the distressed Jews depend upon their great men to make a stand, and
with their wisdom and courage to give check to the victorious arms of
the Chaldeans? Alas! they will make nothing of them. They shall
scoff (he shall, so it is in the original, meaning Nebuchadnezzar,
who being puffed up with his successes, shall scoff) at the
kings and commanders of the forces that think to make head against
him; and the princes shall be a scorn to them, so unequal a
match shall they appear to be. Do they depend upon their garrisons and
fortified towns? He shall deride every stronghold, for to him it
shall be weak, and he shall heap dust, and take it; a little
soil, thrown up for ramparts, shall serve to give him all the advantage
against them that he can desire; he shall make but a jest of them, and
a sport of taking them.
(5.) By all this he shall be puffed up with an intolerable pride, which
shall be his destruction
(v. 11):
Then shall his mind change for the worse. The spirit both of the
people and of the king shall grow more haughty and insolent. Those
that will not be content with their own rights will not be content when
they have made themselves masters of other people’s rights too; but as
the condition rises the mind rises too. This victorious king shall
pass over all the bounds of reason, equity, and modesty, and
break through all their bonds, and thereby he shall offend,
shall make God his enemy, and so prepare ruin for himself by
imputing this his power to his god, whereas he had it from the
God of Israel. Bel and Nebo were the gods of the
Chaldeans, and to them they gave the glory of their successes; they
were hardened in their idolatry, and blasphemously argued that because
they had conquered Israel their gods were too strong for the God of
Israel. Note, It is a great offence (and the common offence of proud
people) to take that glory to ourselves, or to give it to gods of our
own making, which is due to the living and true God only. These closing
words of the sentence give a glimpse of comfort to the afflicted people
of God; it is to be hoped that they will change their minds, and grow
better, and ripen for deliverance; and they did so. However, their
enemies will change their minds, and grow worse, and ripen for
destruction, which will inevitably come in God’s due time; for a
haughty spirit, lifted up against God, goes before a fall.
| The Prophet’s Plea; The Prophet’s Complaint. | B. C. 600. |
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12 Art thou not from everlasting, O LORD my God, mine Holy
One? we shall not die. O LORD, thou hast ordained them for
judgment; and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for
correction.
13 Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not
look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal
treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth
the man that is more righteous than he?
14 And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping
things, that have no ruler over them?
15 They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in
their net, and gather them in their drag: therefore they rejoice
and are glad.
16 Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense
unto their drag; because by them their portion is fat, and
their meat plenteous.
17 Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare
continually to slay the nations?
The prophet, having received of the Lord that which he was to deliver
to the people, now turns to God, and again addresses himself to him for
the ease of his own mind under the burden which he saw. And still he is
full of complaints. If he look about him, he sees nothing but violence
done by Israel; if he look before him, he sees nothing but violence
done against Israel; and it is hard to say which is the more melancholy
sight. His thoughts of both he pours out before the Lord. It is our
duty to be affected both with the iniquities and with the calamities of
the church of God and of the times and places wherein we live; but we
must take heed lest we grow peevish in our resentments, and carry them
too far, so as to entertain any hard thoughts of God, or lose the
comfort of our communion with him. The world is bad, and always was so,
and will be so; it is out of our power to mend it; but we are sure that
God governs the world, and will bring glory to himself out of all, and
therefore we must resolve to make the best of it, must be ourselves
better, and long for the better world. The prospect of the prevalence
of the Chaldeans drives the prophet to his knees, and he takes the
liberty to plead with God concerning it. In his plea we may
observe,
I. The truths which he lays down, which he resolves to abide by, and
with which he endeavours to comfort himself and his friends, under the
growing threatening power of the Chaldeans; and they will furnish us
with pleasing considerations for our support in the like case.
1. However it be, yet God is the Lord our God, and our Holy
One. The victorious Chaldeans impute their power to their idols,
but we are taught to tell them that the God of Israel is the true
God, the living God,
Jer. x. 10, 11.
(1.) He is Jehovah, the fountain of all being, power, and
perfection. Our rock is not as theirs.
(2.) “He is my God.” He speaks in the people’s name; every
Israelite may say, “He is mine. Though we are thus sore broken,
and all this has come upon us, yet have we not forgotten the name of
our God, nor quitted our relation to him, yet have we not disowned
him, nor hath he disowned us,
We are an offending people; he is an offended God; yet he is ours, and
we will not entertain any hard thoughts of him, nor of his service, for
all this.”
(3.) “He is my Holy One.” This intimates that the prophet loved
God as a holy God, loved him for the sake of his holiness. “He is
mine because he is a Holy One; and therefore he
will be my sanctifier and my Saviour, because he is my Holy One.
Men are unholy, but my God is holy.“
2. Our God is from everlasting. This he pleads with him: Art thou
not from everlasting, O Lord my God? It is matter of great and
continual comfort to God’s people, under the troubles of this present
life, that their God is from everlasting. This intimates,
(1.) The eternity of his nature; if he is from everlasting, he will be
to everlasting, and we must have recourse to this first principle, when
things seen, which are temporal, are discouraging, that we have hope
and help sufficient in a god that is not seen, that is eternal. “Art
thou not from everlasting, and then wilt thou not make bare thy
everlasting arm, in pursuance of thy everlasting counsels, to make unto
thyself an everlasting name?”
(2.) The antiquity of his covenant: “Art thou not from of old, a
God in covenant with thy people” (so some understand it), “and hast
thou not done great things for them in the days of old, which we
have heard with our ears, and which our fathers have told us of; and
art thou not the same God still that thou ever wast? Thou art God,
and changest not.“
3. While the world stands God will have a church in it. Thou art from
everlasting, and then we shall not die. The Israel of God shall
not be extirpated, nor the name of Israel blotted out, though it may
sometimes seem to be very near it; like the apostles
(2 Cor. vi. 9),
chastened, and not killed; chastened sorely, but not delivered over
to death,
Ps. cxviii. 18.
See how the prophet infers the perpetuity of the church from the
eternity of God; for Christ has said, Because I live, and
therefore as long as I live, you shall live also,
John xiv. 19.
He is the rock on which the church is so firmly built that the gates
of hell shall not, cannot, prevail against it. We shall not
die.
4. Whatever the enemies of the church may do against her, it is
according to the counsel of God, and is designed and directed for wise
and holy ends: Thou hast ordained them; thou hast established
them. It was God that gave the Chaldeans their power, made them a
formidable people, and in his counsel determined what they should do,
nor had they any power against his Israel but what was given them
from above. He gave them their commission to take the spoil and
to take the prey,
Isa. x. 6.
Herein God appears a mighty God, that the power of mighty men is
derived from him, depends upon him, and is under his check; he says
concerning it, Hitherto shall it come, and no further. Those
whom God ordains shall do no more than what God has ordained, which is
a great comfort to God’s suffering people. Men are God’s hand, the rod
in his hand,
And he has ordained them for judgment, and for
correction. God’s people need correction, and deserve it; they must
expect it; they shall have it; when wicked men are let loose against
them, it is not for their destruction, that they may be ruined, but for
their correction, that they may be reformed; they are not intended for
a sword, to cut them off, but for a rod, to drive out the foolishness
that is found in their hearts, though they mean not so, neither does
their heart think so,
Isa. x. 7.
Note, It is matter of great comfort to us, in reference to the troubles
and afflictions of the church, that, whatever mischief men design to
them, God designs to bring good out of them, and we are sure that
his counsel shall stand.
5. Though the wickedness of the wicked may prosper for a while, yet God
is a holy God, and does not approve of that wickedness
(v. 13):
Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil. The prophet,
observing how very vicious and impious the Chaldeans were, and yet what
great success they had against God’s Israel, found a temptation arising
from it to say that it was vain to serve God, and that it was
indifferent to him what men were. But he soon suppresses the thought,
by having recourse to his first principle, That God is not, that he
cannot be, the author or patron of sin; as he cannot do iniquity
himself, so he is of purer eyes than to behold it with any
allowance or approbation; no, it is that abominable thing which the
Lord hates. He sees all the sin that is committed in the world, and
it is an offence to him, it is odious in his eyes, and those that
commit it are thereby made obnoxious to his justice. There is in the
nature of God an antipathy to those dispositions and practices that are
contrary to his holy law; and, though an expedient is happily found out
for his being reconciled to sinners, yet he never will, nor can, be
reconciled to sin. And this principle we must resolve to abide by,
though the dispensations of his providence may for a time, and in some
instances, seem to be inconsistent with it. Note, God’s connivance at
sin must never be interpreted into a giving countenance to it; for
he is not a God that has pleasure in wickedness,
Ps. v. 4, 5.
The iniquity which, it is here said, God does not look upon, may be
meant especially of the mischief done to God’s people by their
persecutors; though God sees cause to permit it, yet he does not
approve of it; so it agrees with that of Balaam
He has not be held iniquity against Jacob, nor seen, with
allowance, perverseness against Israel, which is very
comfortable to the people of God, in their afflictions by the rage of
men, that they cannot infer God’s anger from it; though the instruments
of their trouble hate them, it does not therefore follow that God does;
nay, he loves them, and it is in love that he corrects them.
II. The grievances he complains of, and finds hard to reconcile with
these truths: “Since we are sure that thou art a holy God, why have
atheists temptation given them to question whether thou art so or no?
Wherefore lookest thou upon the Chaldeans that deal
treacherously with thy people, and givest them success in their
attempts upon us? Why dost thou suffer thy sworn enemies, who blaspheme
thy name, to deal thus cruelly, thus perfidiously, with thy sworn
subjects, who desire to fear thy name? What shall we say to this?” This
was a temptation to Job
to David
to Jeremiah,
1. That God permitted sin, and was patient with the sinners. He
looked upon them; he saw all their wicked doings and designs,
and did not restrain nor punish them, but suffered them to speed in
their purposes, to go on and prosper, and to carry all before them.
Nay, his looking upon them intimates that he not only gave them no
check or rebuke, but that he gave them encouragement and assistance, as
if he smiled upon them and favoured them. He held his tongue
when they went on in their wicked courses, said nothing against them,
gave no orders to stop them. These things thou hast done, and I kept
silence.
2. That his patience was abused, and, because sentence against
these evil works and workers was not executed speedily,
therefore their hearts were the more fully set in them to do
evil.
(1.) They were false and deceitful, and there was no credit to be given
them, nor any confidence to be put in them. They deal
treacherously; under colour of peace and friendship, they
prosecute and execute the most mischievous designs, and make no
conscience of their word in any thing.
(2.) They hated and persecuted men because they were better than
themselves, as Cain hated Abel because his own works were evil and
his brother’s righteous. The wicked devours the man that is more
righteous than he, for that very reason, because he shames him;
they have an ill will to the image of God, and therefore devour
good men, because they bear that image. Though many of the Jews were as
bad as the Chaldeans themselves, and worse, yet there were those among
them that were much more righteous, and yet were devoured by them.
(3.) They made no more of killing men that of catching fish. The
prophet complains that, Providence having delivered up the weaker to be
prey to the stronger, they were, in effect, made as the fishes of
the sea,
v. 14.
So they had been among themselves, preying upon one another as the
greater fishes do upon the less
(v. 3),
and they were made so to the common enemy. They were as the creeping
things, or swimming things (for the word is used for
fish,
Gen. i. 20),
that have no ruler over them, either to restrain them from
devouring one another or to protect them from being devoured by their
enemies. They are given up to the Chaldeans as fish to the fishermen.
Those proud oppressors make no conscience of killing them, any more
than men do of pulling fish out of the water, so small account do they
make of human lives. They make no difficulty of killing them, but do it
with as much ease as men catch fish, that make no resistance, but are
unguarded and unarmed, and it is rather a pastime than any pains to
take them. They make no distinction among them, but all is fish that
comes to their net; and they reckon every thing their own that they can
lay their hands on. They have various ways of spoiling and destroying,
as men have of taking fish. Some they take up with the angle
(v. 15),
one by one; others they catch in shoals, and by wholesale, in
their net, and gather them in their drag, their enclosing
net. Such variety of methods have they to destroy those by whom they
hope to enrich themselves.
(4.) They gloried in what they got, and pleased themselves with it,
though it was got dishonestly: Their portion is fat, and their meat
plenteous; they prosper in their oppression and fraud; they have a
great deal, and it is of the best; their land is good, and they have
abundance of it. And therefore,
[1.] They have great complacency in themselves, and are very pleasant;
they live merrily
(v. 15):
Therefore they rejoice and are glad, because their wealth is
great, and their projects succeed for the increase of it,
Soul, take thy ease,
Luke xii. 19.
[2.] They have a great conceit of themselves, and are great admirers of
their own ingenuity and management: They sacrifice to their own net,
and burn incense to their own drag; they applaud themselves for
having got so much money, though ever so dishonestly. Note, There is a
proneness in us to take the glory of our outward prosperity to
ourselves, and to say, My might, and the power of my hands, have
gotten me this wealth,
Deut. viii. 17.
This is idolizing ourselves, sacrificing to the dragnet, because it is
our own, which is as absurd a piece of idolatry as sacrificing to
Neptune or Dagon. That which makes them adore their net thus is
because by it their portion is fat. Those that make a god of
their money will make a god of their drag-net, if they can but get
money by it.
III. The prophet, in the close, humbly expresses his hope that God will
not suffer these destroyers of mankind always to go on and prosper
thus, and expostulates with God concerning it
(v. 17):
“Shall they therefore empty their net? Shall they enrich
themselves, and fill their own vessels, with that which they have by
violence and oppression taken away from their neighbours? Shall they
empty their net of what they have caught, that they may cast it into
the sea again, to catch more? And wilt thou suffer them to proceed in
this wicked course? Shall they not spare continually to slay the
nations? Must the numbers and wealth of nations be sacrificed to
their net? As if it were a small thing to rob men of their estates,
shall they rob God of his glory? Is not God the king of nations, and
will he not assert their injured rights? Is he not jealous for his own
honour, and will he not maintain that?” The prophet lodges the matter
in God’s hand, and leaves it with him, as the psalmist does.
Arise, O God! Plead thy own cause.
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