230.]
Israelites also, when they should have provoked him to anger, by sinning in a far more grievous manner, against clearer light and knowledge, and against infinitely greater obligations than they. Of this he forewarned them ; and the fault, as well as misery, would be all their own. " His work is perfect: all his ways are judgment : a God of truth and without iniquity ; just and right is hek."]
2. To humble them —
[The Jews were at all times a stiff-necked people, " a per- verse and crooked generation." The best period of their history was from the death of Moses to the death of Joshua : yet God testified respecting them even then, that they mani- fested all those evil dispositions, which in process of time would be matured, and grow up into an abundant harvest: " I know their imagination which they go about, even now, before I have brought them into the land which I sware1!" Hence every Jew must see, that as his forefathers were not put into posses- sion of that land for their righteousness, so he, and all his whole nation, are banished from it for their iniquities. And oh, how humiliating the comparison between their present, and then former, state ! once the glory of the whole world, and now " an astonishment, and a proverb, and a by-word in every nation where they dwell." They need only repeat this song, and they have enough to shew them how low they are fallen, and enough to humble them in dust and ashes.]
3. To prepare them for his promised blessings — [The promise of a future restoration would of itself be
sufficient to stimulate then desires after it. But it is worthy of observation, that the very judgments which God here denounces against them are as strongly expressive of his gracious intentions towards them, and as encouraging to their minds, as the pro- mise itself: " They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with them which are not a people ; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation m." Thus whilst he transferred the blessings of salvation to the Gen- tiles, he did it no less for the good of his own rebellious and apostate people the Jews, than for the Gentiles themselves ; hoping thereby to stir them up to seek a participation of those privileges, which, when exclusively enjoyed by them, they had despised". This idea, the moment it shall enter into their minds, will afford them rich encouragement : and we are per- suaded, that, if the Christian world evinced a just sense of the
k Deut. xxxii. 4. J ver. 21.
m Deut. xxxii. 21. with Rom. x. 19. n Rom. xi. 11 — 14.