Lastly, we should be stirred up by this subject to concur with God in his gracious intentions towards the Jews. In the song before us, there are repeated intimations that God will once more restore to his favour his now degenerate and afflicted people. In verse 36, it is said, " The Lord will judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and that there is none shut up or left." And the song concludes with these re- markable words, " Rejoice, O ye nations ! with his people : for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and unto his peojole" Here then, you see, that there is mercy in reserve for the Jewish people, and that the Gentiles also shall be partakers of their joy. But in our text there is a hint of a very peculiar nature, namely, not merely that God will vouchsafe mercy to them, in the midst of their present chastisement, but that he will render those very chastisements subservient to his gracious designs. He intimates that he is even now provoking them to jealousy, by the mercies he bestows on us ; that is, that he is even now endea- vouring to inflame them with a holy desire to regain his favour. It is precisely in this sense that St. Paul uses the same expression : indeed, St. Paul tells us, that he himself used the very same means for the same end: " Through the fall of the Jews (says he) is salvation come to the Gentiles, to provoke them to jealousy. Now I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the Apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office ; if by any means I may provoke to jealousy (it is the same word as before b) them which are my flesh, and might save some of them." This then is the work in which we are to co-operate with God : and, truly, if we were all in earnest about it, we might, with God's help, do great things. They behold us professing ourselves to be the peculiar people of God : and, if they saw so great a difference between themselves and us as they ought to see, truly they
b ITupa^Xwo-w, Rom. xi. 11, 14. K K 2