2. To bring them to repentance —
[In this present world the judgments which God inflicts are all intended for good. It was " for their good " that God sent his people into captivity in Babylon"1: and for their good he has now scattered them over the face of the earth. The punishment inflicted on Levi for his cruelty to the Shechemites, was, that he and his family should have no lot among the tribes of Israel, but be scattered amongst them all": yet was that overruled for their greater honour ; they being appointed to minister in the sanctuary before the Lord ; and pre-eminently honoured, as having the Lord himself for their portion °. In like manner, though the present dispersion of the Jews is a heavy judgment, God inflicts it, not as the sentence of an inexorable Judge, but as the correction of a loving Parent : and the very circumstance of his transferring his regards from them to the Gentile world, is a yet farther expression of his parental love, it being designed to provoke his deserted people to jealousy, and thus to bring them to a renewed enjoyment of their forfeited inheritance1*. "They are cast off only for a season5;" and, "if they abide not in unbelief, they shall yet again be grafted on their own stem," from which they have been broken off r.]
But in the prophecy before us, our attention is particularly called to,
II. The ulterior purposes which they are destined to accomplish —
The dew and rain are sent by God to fertilize the earth3: and in like manner are the Jews dispersed throughout the world,
1. As witnesses for him —
[Whoever beholds a Jew, beholds a witness of the pro- per Deity of Jehovah. The whole of his history attests, that the Lord Jehovah is Lord of lords, and God of gods. Who amongst the gods of the heathen could ever have done for their votaries what Jehovah has done for his chosen people ? Who amongst them could have predicted every thing that should befall them during the space of many thousand years ? Who could have preserved their worshippers, as Jehovah has preserved his, unmixed with the people amongst whom they are scattered, and as distinct from all other people
m Jer. xxiv. 5. and Mic. iv. 10. n Gen. xlix. 5 — 7.
0 Numb, xviii. 2 — 24. p Rom. xi. 11. i Rom. xi. 25, 26. r Rom. xi. 23, 24. s Isai. Iv. 10.