The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Chronicles — Section 70

face in vain." 3. One 1vho is ready to forgive. "When thou heareet, forgive." We should meet continually with God under a blessed sense of son~hip, e.s those "whose transgressions he.ve been forgiven," and who are as children at home with their Father, as redeemed ones with their Saviour. 'l'his is the true basis of communion with God. But, even then and thus, it becomes us to bethink ourselves that our service is not untainted with imperfection; near to our lips should be the recurring prayer. "And when thou hearest, forgive." Humility is not disowned by the more advanced graoes of trustfulness, love, joy in God.-C. Ven;, 22-23.-Divinejusti.ce. This petition snpposes- I. THE ooMmssroN OF DELIBERATE WRONG by one man against another. A dispute may readily arise in which each man, affected in his judgment by his own personal interests, believes himself tc make a righteous claim. This is a case for impartial intervention, for the decision of one who is not prejudiced by any interest of hiH own. But the case here referred to by Solomon is one of deliberate wrong perpetrated by one man against his neighbour. It is a painful thing that this should have to be pre- supposed among the "people of God." Yet it was so. Enlightenment was not, and it is not, any positive guarantee against actual unrighteousness. A man may know all he can learn of Christ, sitting constantly and reverentially at his feet, and yet he may allow himself to do that which defrauds his brother and does him cruel and shameful wrong. Saddening observation only too frequently and only too powerfully attests it. II. Tim APPEAL TO GoD. The injured Hebrew made his appeal to the Lord his God; he required the offending neighbour to take an oath in the very presence of the Holy One, invoking the judgment of God against the one who was in the wrong. It was presumably a last resort, an ultimate appeal. Not formally, but substantially, we do like\\"ise. If human judgment fails, we leave the guilty in the hands of God. We commit our righteous cause to his Divine arbitration. We ask God to make our innocence appear, to restore to us the good name or the possession of which we have been defrauded.. We make our appeal from earth to Heaven. III. THE DrvIKE JUDGMENT. Solomon prayed God to intervene so that the wicked should be recompensed and the righteous justified.. Under that dispensation he might rightly and even confidently make that request. But what may we expect now of the Divine justice? These three things: 1. 'l'hat the righteous laws of God are always working for the overthrow of evil and the enthronement of integrity; the former is radically weak., and the latter is essentiall_y strong and prevailing. 2. That unvisited evil is always attended with spiritual failure, while unrewarded rectitude is alw~ys accompanied and sustained by spiritual worth. 3. That there is a long future which holds ample compensations in its unsounded depths. Divine justice will prove to be completely vintlicated when we have looked deep enough and waited long enough.-C. Vers. 24-28, 34, 35.-God and the nation. Solomon takes his place and his part on this great occasion as the sovereign of the nation; he prays/or the people ~f the land in the double sense of representing them and of interceding for them. It 1s the Hebrew nation that was then "before God," and is now before us. We therefore think of- L NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY. That is assumed throughout. It is not stated in so mauy words, but the idea of it pervades the whole prayer. The people of Israel were not at liberty to choose their own deity, nor their own ecclesiastical polity, nor even their own forms of worship; nor might they determine how they should be related to one another. In all the important relationships in which they stood, of every kind, they owed a direct obedience to God. And this rested upon the bases of- II. NATIONAL INBEB.JTANCE. Their land was that which God had" given his people for an inheritance" (ver. 27). So very distinctly and remarkably had God bestowed their land upon them, that they might well realize their nation_al obligation. B~t when we take all things into account, we shall see that every nat10n owes all that it ha.s and is to the creative, formative, providential goodness of Almighty God; and it is, therefore, responsible to him for its creed, its religious worship, its la~s a~d t;tatutes, its habits of life; for there is no nation anywhere that has not derived 1t11 orr. v1. 1-42.J THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CHRONIOLES. 71