and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my covenant. And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as a witness ; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed: for I know their imagination which they go about, even now, before I have brought them into the land which I sware V
In this song are foretold the awful apostasies of the Jewish nation, together with all the judgments that would be inflicted on them, from that time even to the period of their future restoration.
The words which I have chosen for my text, contain the sum and substance of the whole : they specify the ground of God's displeasure against his people, and the way in which he would manifest that displeasure : and they particularly mark the correspondence which there should be between their sin and their punish- ment: " 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 those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation."
In discoursing on these words, there are two things to be considered ;
I. The import of this prophecy respecting the Jews;
II. The use to be made of it by us Gentiles.
I. The import of this prophecy —
The general facts relating to it are so well known, that it will not be necessary to enter very minutely into them. Every one knows how highly favoured a people the Jewish nation have been; how exalted and privileged above all other people upon earth. The manner also in which they requited the kindness of their God, is well known. We are not disposed to think that human nature is worse in them than in
b Deut. xxxi. 19 — 21.