1014.]
We shall find it not unprofitable to consider this passage,
I. As fulfilled in the Jewish people —
God's expectations from them were reasonable —
[The mercies which he vouchsafed to them, when " he took them for his own peculiar people," are well known. They
are again and again specified in the Holy Scriptures3
In particular, he revealed to them his laws from heaven b, yea, and " gave his Holy Spirit also to instruct them0." In doing these things, he said, " Surely they are my people, that will not lie." They will be to me a peculiar people : they will love, and serve, and honour me : and nothing will ever induce them to depart from me.
This, I say, was nothing more than what his mercies towards them most plainly called for. Never had any nation under heaven been dealt with as they had beend: and therefore he might reasonably expect that they would requite him according to the mercies vouchsafed unto them.]
But they most grievously disappointed him —
[" They soon forgat his works, and were disobedient to him at the sea, even at the Red Sea." Their whole conduct was one continued series of murmurings and rebellions ; as Moses himself testified, " Ye have been rebellious from the day that I knew youe."
Nor was it in the wilderness only that they thus grieved and vexed him. When they were brought into Canaan, they still continued a stiff-necked and rebellious people ; insomuch that God himself was " broken with their whorish heartf;" and " was pressed under them, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves g." Thus they proceeded, till at last they filled up the measure of their iniquities, in the murder of their Messiah.]
His resentment against them, therefore, was most
just—
[In the wilderness they so provoked him to anger, that of the whole number who were above twenty years of age at the time of their coming out of Egypt, two only were suffered to enter into the Promised Land. In Canaan, too, he was constrained in like manner to punish their descendants also with the severest judgments, insomuch that on some occasions " his own soul was grieved for the misery of Israel." But all his chastisements proved ineffectual for their permanent
a See Neh. ix. 7—25. * Neh. ix. 13. ° Neh. ix. 20.
d Deut. iv. 7, 8, 32—35. e Deut. ix. 7. 22—24. f Ezek. vi. 9. s Amos ii. 13.