Deuteronomy

Chapter 1

Ver. 1. These be the words which Moses spake.] And surely he spake much, if he spake, as some cast it up, this whole Book in less than ten days’ space. Certain it is that he spake here, as ever, most divinely, and like himself, or rather beyond himself—the end of a thing being better, if better may be, than the beginning thereof, {#Ec 7:8} as good wine is best at last; and as the sun shines most amiably when it is going down. This book of the law it was that the king was to write out with his own hand, {#De 17:18,19} that it might serve as his manual, and attend him in his running library. This was that happy book that good Josiah lighting upon, after it had long laid hid in the temple, melted at the menaces thereof, and obtained of God to die in peace, though he were slain in battle. This only book was that silver brook, that preciously purling current, out of which the Lord Christ, our Champion, chose all those three smooth stones, wherewith he prostrated the Goliath of hell in that sharp encounter. {#Mt 4:4,7,10} And surely, if Cicero could call Aristotle’s "Politics," for the elegancy of the style, and for the excellency of the matter, aureum flumen orationis; and if the same author durst say that the law of the twelve tables did exceed all the libraries of philosophers, both in weight and worth; how much rather is all this true of this second edition of God’s law, with an addition.

Ver. 2. There are eleven days’journey.] So many days’ march for a foot army. But Philo the Jew saith a horseman might despatch it in three days. {a}

{a} Triduo confici potuit.

Ver. 3. In the eleventh month.] And in the twelfth month of this same year he died; so that this was his swan song: Sic, ubi fata vocant, &c.

Ver. 4. After he had slain Sihon.] If Samson had not turned aside to see the lion, that not long before he had slain, he had not found the honey in the carcass. {#Jud 14:8} So, if we recognise not our dangers, deliverances, and achievements, we shall neither taste how sweet the Lord is, nor return him his due praises. To true thankfulness is required, (1.) Recognition; (2.) Estimation; (3.) Retribution. See them all in #Ps 116:3,7,12.

Ver. 5. Began Moses to declare.] And he was not long about it. {See Trapp on "De 1:1"} A ready heart makes riddance of God’s work; for being oiled with the Spirit, it becomes lithe and nimble, quick of despatch.

Ver. 6. Long enough.] The law is not for men to continue under, but for a time till they be fitted for Christ. {#Ga 3:16-25} Humbled they must be, and hammered for a season; sense of misery goes before sense of mercy.

Ver. 7. Unto the great river Euphrates.] Here are the bounds of the Promised Land; all which if they enjoy not, the fault was merely in themselves. Joshua chideth them for their slackness and dastardliness.

Ver. 8. Go in and possess it.] God was ready, but they were not ripe for such a mercy. So {#2Ch 20:33} the high places were not taken away; for the people had not yet prepared their hearts for such a reformation: the work was ensnarled and retarded by their unfitness. See #Isa 59:2.

Ver. 9. I am not able.] Politici et ecclesiastici labores maximi sunt, saith Luther. None have so hard a tug of it as magistrates and ministers. Ισοθεοι ημεν, ει μη και πραγατα και φροντιδας και φσβους υπερ παντας τους ιδιοτευοντας ειχομεν, said Augustus to his Livia. Had we not businesses, and cares, and fears, above any private person, we should be equal to the gods. {a}

{a} Dio Cass.

Ver. 11. The Lord God of your fathers.] Such holy ejaculations, such sallies of soul, and egression of affection to God and his people, are frequently found in heavenly minded men.

Ver. 12. Hear your cumbrance.] A prince’s temples are not so compassed with a crown, as his mind besieged with cares; nor is he so lifted up with the splendour of his train, as cast down with the multitude of his fears. {See Trapp on "De 1:9"} St Paul also had the "cumber {a} of the churches." {#2Co 11:28} All care cumbered and mustered together, and that with anxiety; with the same solicitude that a man hath about his own most important business.

{a} επισυστασις, μεριμνα

Ver. 15. And officers among your tribes.] That might put the laws in execution; which is the same to the law that the clapper is to the bell. There were in good Josiah’s days’ horrible abominations. And why? By the slackness of under offices. {#Zep 3:3}

Ver. 16. Hear the causes, &c.] Hear them out. In the Forum of Rome the accuser had six hours allotted him to accuse, the accused had nine hours to make his answer {a}

And judge righteously.] So upright was the sentence of the Areopagites in Athens, that none could ever say he was unjustly condemned; nay, both parties, as well those that are cast as they that cast, are alike contented. {b}

{a} Ulpian., in Orat. Demosth. de fal legat.

{b} ηππωμενοι σπεργουσιν ομοιως τοιν κεκρατηκοσι.

Ver. 17. Ye shall not respect persons.] God will surely reprove you, saith Job, if you secretly accept persons. {#Job 13:10} Aequum me utrique parti tam in disceptandis controversiis, quam in tuenda disciplina, praebebo, said Justinian: I will hear causes without prejudicate impiety, judiciously examine them without sinister obliquity, and sincerely judge them without unjust partiality. It was the oath of the heathen judges, as the orator relates, Audiam accusatorem et reum sine affectibus et personarum respectione: I will hear the plaintiff and defendant with an equal mind, without affection and respect of persons. And agreeable hereunto is the oath taken by our circuit judge, as it is recorded in the Statute of the 18 of Edward III.

You shall not be afraid.] For, Facile a iustitia deviat, qui in causis non Deum sed homines pertimescit, saith Chrysostom: A faint hearted judge doth easily pervert justice. A man of courage he must be, a Coeur-de-lion, another Cato, a quo nemo unquam rem iniustam petere audebat, of whom no man ever durst desire anything unjust. This Solomon symbolised by the steps of his throne adorned with lions; the Athenian judges, by sitting in Mars Street.

For the judgment is God’s.] Whose person ye bear, and in whose seat ye sit; and should therefore sit in as great, though not so slavish a fear of offending, as Olanes, in the history, sat upon the flayed skin of his father Silannes, nailed by Cambyses on the tribunal; or, as a Russian judge that fears the boiling caldron; or the Turkish senate, when they think the great Turk to stand behind the Arras, at the dangerous door. Cave, spectat Cato; take heed, Cato seeth you, -was an ancient watchword among the Romans, and a great retentive from evil. How much more amongst us should Cave, spectat Dominus; Take heed, the Lord looks on.

Ver. 19. That great and terrible wilderness.] Abounding with want of all necessities, {#Jer 2:6} and surrounded with many, mighty, and malicious enemies. Such is this present evil world to those that are bound for the heavenly Canaan. Many miseries and molestations, both Satanical and secular, they are sure to meet with, this world being a place of that nature, that, as it is reported of the Straits of Magellan, {a} which way soever a man bend his course, if homeward, he is sure to have the wind against him.

{a} Heyl., Geog., p. 802.

Ver. 21. Behold the Lord.] {See Trapp on "De 1:8"}

Ver. 22. We will send men before us.] Thus empty man will be wiser than God, though "man be born like a wild ass-colt." {#Job 11:12} It was unbelief that prompted them to this practice: for "they could not enter because of unbelief." Carnal policy serves the worldling, as the ostrich’s wings, to make him outrun others upon earth, but helps him never a whit towards heaven.

Ver. 23. Pleased me well.] Seeing you were set upon it, and it would be no better.

Ver. 25. And brought us word again.] Joshua and Caleb did; for the rest are not here reckoned of; God counts of men by the goodness that is in them.

Ver. 27. Because the Lord hated us.] A gross mistake. Why should it then so greatly grieve us. that our good intentions are so much misconstrued? That is here complained of, as an argument of God’s hatred, that he intended for an instance of his love. {#De 4:37 7:8} In quo dilexisti nos? "wherein hast thou loved us?" said those malcontents in Malachi, {#Mal 1:2} that cast the helve after the hatchet, as the proverb is, and like children, because they might not have what they would, grew sullen, and would have nothing.

Ver. 31. As a man doth bear his son.] Charily and tenderly, as his own heart; not hating them, as they desperately belied the Lord. {#De 1:27} "For if a man find his enemy, will he let him go well away?" {#1Sa 24:19} Will he accommodate him as God did these murmurers? Never was any prince served in such state as they were.

Ver. 32. Ye did not believe.] Sic surdo plerunque fabulam: there was none within to make answer. "Who hath believed our report?" &c. We cannot get men to credit us.

Ver. 37. The Lord was angry with me.] The saint’s afflictions proceed oft from love displeased, from love offended. "Fury is not in God." {#Isa 27:4}

Ver. 41. We have sinned, we will go up.] Temporaries are set upon sin in the very confession thereof. Unless to the confession of sin we add confusion of sin, we do nothing. {#Pr 28:13} Yet "honour me before the people," said Saul: Give me a bribe, said trembling Felix.

Ver. 46. So ye abode in Kadesh many days.] Many indeed; yea, many years. And here it was, or hereabouts, that they received those laws which are recorded, {#Nu 15} as also that they stoned him that gathered sticks on the Sabbath day; that Korah and his accomplices perished; that fourteen thousand seven hundred died of the plague; that Aaron’s rod flourished; that Moses, seeing the people fall so fast in the wilderness, wrote #Ps 90, -where he telleth us that the ordinary term of man’s life was reduced to seventy or eighty years, and so made shorter by half than before. All which things are thought to have happened in the last six months of the second year after their coming out of Egypt: the history of those two years only, and of the last of the forty are set forth by Moses: the intercurrent thirty seven years with their events, save only the bare names of their various stations, {#Nu 33} being passed over in silence. If men will take liberty to commit sin against God, he will make but a short story of them and their works: Lot, for instance. {#Ge 19:36}

Chapter 2

Ver. 1. Then we turned, ] viz., When we had bought our wit, and had paid for our learning, by our late discomfiture.

Ver. 3. Turn you northward.] Thus God’s word was their director unto all places, and in all actions. In which respect these histories of holy Scripture excel all human histories in the world, as is well observed. That which they tell us of their Dea vibilia, guiding passengers, &c., is a mere fiction.

Ver. 4. Which dwell in Seir.] To distinguish them from the Amalekites, Esau’s seed too, but devoted to destruction.

And they shall be afraid of you.] Though worse afraid than hurt.

“ Hic rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori?”

We read of some Jews, that at the sack of Jerusalem killed themselves lest they should be taken by the enemy.

Ver. 5. Because I have given mount Seir.] Thus the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance. {#De 32:8} And a man must needs have some right to his inheritance, to his portion. {#Ps 17:14} What Ananias had was his own whilst he had it, as Peter tells him; {#Ac 5:4} yet Satan had filled his heart. It is therefore a rigour to say, the wicked are usurpers of what they have, and shall be called to account for it. When the king gives a traitor his life, he gives him meat and drink that may maintain his life. That Duke of Alva is worthily taxed for a tyrant, that starved his prisoners, even after quarter; saying, though he promised to give them their lives, he did not promise to find them meat. {a} Wicked men have both a civil title to that they have, and a title before God, who will call them to account indeed at the last day, not for possessing what they had, but for abusing that possession.

{a} Grimston’s Hist. of Netherlands.

Ver. 6. Buy meat of them for money.] "Money answereth all things," saith Solomon. {#Ec 10:19} Money is the monarch of the world, saith another, and bears most mastery. But that covetous Caliph of Babylon, taken by Haalon, brother to Mango the great Cham of Tartary, and commanded to eat his fill of that great wealth that he had heaped up together, found ere he died, that one mouthful of meat was more worth than a whole houseful of money. {a}

{a} Turk. Hist., fol. 113.

Ver. 7. For the Lord thy God hath blessed thee, ] viz., With money, to fetch thee in other commodities. It is the blessing of God, when all is done, that maketh rich; without this men do but labour in the fire, labour all night and take nothing, trouble themselves to no purpose; all their endeavours are but Arena sine calce, sand without lime, they will not hold together, but, like untempered mortar, fall asunder; there being a curse upon unlawful practices, though men be never so industrious: as you may see in Jehoiachim. {#Jer 22:18,19}

Ver. 9. Because I have given Ar.] The royal city, set upon a hill. {#Nu 21:15,28} God, as a liberal Lord, gives not some small cottage or annuity, for life, to his elder servants, as great men use to do, but bountifully provides for them and theirs to many generations. Who would not serve thee then, O king of nations!

Ver. 10. Many and tall are the Anakims.] And if God cast out those Emims, or terrible ones, before the Moabites, will he not much more cast out these Anakims before the Israelites? Nihil unquam ei negasse credendum est, quem ad vituli hortatur esum. {a}

{a} Jerome.

Ver. 12. As Israel did unto the land.] This and some other parcels, scattered here and there, seem to have been added to Moses’s words, whether by Joshua or Ezra, or some other prophet, it much matters not, after the conquest of the land of Canaan.

Ver. 14. As the Lord sware.] His menaces also, as well as his promises, are confirmed by oath. Let no man, therefore, think that they are spoken in terrorem only; but read #Zep 3:5.

Ver. 19. Because I have given it.] {See Trapp on "De 2:5"}

Ver. 20. Zamzummims.] Big and boisterous, bearing down all before them; presumptuous wicked ones they were, and yet they called themselves Rephaims, that is, physicians or preservers: such, indeed, rulers ought to be. {#Isa 3:7} The Greeks, therefore, call a king Αναξ, ab ακος, medela, because he is to be ligator vulnerum, chirurgus, et Reip. medicus -the commonwealth’s surgeon and physician. {a} But such were not these Zamzummims, more than in name: το μεν ονομα βιος, &c., as he said of his bow, Thy name is life, but thy use is present death.

{a} Cornel. a Lapid., in #Isa 3:7.

Ver. 23. And the Avims, which dwelt in Hazeroth.] These are ancient things, as it is said in another case, {#1Ch 4:22} such, as whereof there is no record but this extant in the world. Well might that Egyptian priest say to Solon, that wise man of Greece, You Greeks are very babies—γερων δε ελλην ουκ εστι—neither is there an ancient writer amongst you. {a}

{a} Diod. Sic.

Ver. 26. With words of peace.] So the Romans, by their heralds, sent to those that opposed or wronged them, caduceum et hastam, a proffer of peace first: For if we princes, said our Henry VII, should take every occasion that is offered, the world should never be quiet, but wearied with continual wars.

“ Cuncta prius tentanda, etc.

Truncatur et artus, —

Ut liceat reliquis securum vivere membris.”

Ver. 30. Had hardened his spirit.] Deus quem destruit, dementat. God makes fools of those whom he intends to destroy.

Ver. 37. Only unto the land.] This kindness these Ammonites, in after ages, very evil requited, {#Am 1:13 Jer 49:1} dealing by them as that monster Michael Balbus dealt by the Emperor Leo Armenius, whom he slew the same night that this prince had pardoned and released him.

Chapter 3

Ver. 1. Then we turned.] How pleasant must the continuation of this holy history needs be to every good heart, out of the mouth of Moses! Methinks I see the people’s ears linked to his tongue with golden chains, as the heathens fable of their Hercules. And surely, if King Alphonsus and some others, of whom the physicians despaired, did recover health beyond all expectation, only by reading Livy, Curtius, Aventinus, &c., {a} what may we think may be done by these wholesome words, {b} these healing histories, if rightly regarded.

{a} Joh. Bodin., De Utilita. Histor.

{b} λογοι υγιαινοντες.

Ver. 2. Fear him not.] Though of a formidable stature. {#De 3:11} The lion is not so fierce as he is painted, saith the Spanish proverb. God will crack the hairy scalp of his enemies. {#Ps 68:21}

Ver. 5. All those cities.] And they were threescore. How well might Moses have been styled πτολιπορθης? or, as King Demetrius was, Poliorcetes, the city taker?

Ver. 6. The men, women, and children.] The Hebrew word םיהמ, here rendered men, written with tsere, signifieth dead men: Surely every man in his best estate, or when best underlaid, is altogether vanity, Selah. {#Ps 39:5}

Ver. 11. Og, {a} king of Bashan, remained, ] sc., In Bashan; and he seems to have been of the remnant of those Rephaims, whom Chedorlaomer and his company smote in Ashteroth. {#Ge 14:5 Jos 13:12}

Is it not in Rabbath?] Kept for a monument of so mighty and massy a man.

{a} The Jews fable that he escaped in the flood by riding astride on the ark!

Ver. 13. Land of giants.] Such as are said to be in another land, in another life. For "he knoweth not that the giants are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell." {#Pr 9:18}

Ver. 16. Unto the river Jabbok.] Famous for Jacob’s wrestling with God near unto it. {#Ge 32:22}

Ver. 21. So shall the Lord.] God hath, and, therefore, God will, is a strong medium of hope, if not a demonstration of Scripture logic.

Ver. 24. What god is there?] Whether deputed or reputed?

Ver. 25. The good land.] The "glory of all lands." {#Eze 20:6}

Goodly mountain.] Moriah likely, whereon the temple afterwards stood.

Ver. 26. Speak no more.] Christians must be sober in prayer. {#1Pe 4:7} Socrates, a heathen, could say, We should pray for no more but this, that good things may be given us of God, who best knoweth what is best for us to receive.

Chapter 4

Ver. 1. The statutes and the judgments.] By "statutes" we may understand the moral law, by "judgments" the judicial, which was fitted to the Jews: Like, as Solon being asked whether he had given the best laws to the Athenians, answered, The best that they could suffer. As for the ceremonial law, it is called "statutes that were not good," because they commanded neither virtue nor vice in themselves, as one {a} gives the reason.

{a} Mr Weems.

Ver. 2. Ye shall not add.] The Jews have added their deuteroseis; the Turks their alfurta; the Papists their unwritten verities, which they equalise, at least, to the Holy Scriptures; and so argue them of insufficiency and imperfection. {a}

{a} Οι σοφοι ημων δευτερωσι, Our wise men teach tradition See #1Co 1:20.

Ver. 3. Destroyed them.] Hanging them up in gibbets, as it were, before your eyes, to warn you.

Ver. 4. Are alive.] Your innocency prevailed for your safety, as it usually doth in a common defection.

Ver. 6. For this is your wisdom.] Omnis sapientia hominis in hoc uno est, saith Lactantius, {a} ut Deum cognoscat et colat: hoc nostrum dogma, hac sententia est: To know and do the will of God, this is the whole of man’s wisdom. "The heart of the wise man is at his right hand," {#Ec 10:2} as teaching it to put things in practice, and to "prove by experience what that good, and holy, and acceptable will of God is." {#Ro 12:2}

A wise and understanding people.] The Spaniards are said to seem wise and are fools; the French to seem fools and are wise; the Portuguese neither to be wise, nor so much as to seem so; the Italians both to seem wise and to be so. But may not that of the prophet be fitly applied to them all, "Behold, they have rejected the Word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?" {#Jer 8:9}

{a} Lactan., Inst., lib. iii, cap. 30.

Ver. 7. Who hath God so nigh unto them.] Yea, this was it that made them so great a nation, who otherwise were but methe mispar, few in number. This made Moses so passionately cry out, "Happy art thou, O Israel! who is like unto thee, O people, saved by the Lord!" {#De 33:29}

Ver. 8. So righteous.] {See Trapp on "De 1:1"}

Ver. 9. Only take heed.] Cavebis autem, si pavebis.

Lest thou forget.] Eaten bread is soon forgotten.

Teach them thy sons.] A special help against forgetfulness; yea, this is the best art of memory. Of all things God cannot abide to be forgotten.

Ver. 10. Specially the day.] A high favour, and most honourably mentioned. {#Ne 9:13}

Ver. 12. Ye saw no similitude.] Numa the Roman lawgiver would not permit any image, whether painted or carved, to be placed in their temples, eo quod nefas duceret praestantiora deterioribus adsimulare, because he held it unlawful to set forth a better thing by a worse, &c. Hence it was that the Roman temples had no pictures in them for a hundred and seventy years after the building of that city. Irenaeus reproves the heretics called Gnostici, for that they carried about the image of Christ, made in Pilate’s time, after his own proportion; for "to whom will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?" {#Isa 40:18}

Ver. 14. Statutes and judgments.] {See Trapp on "De 1:1"}

Ver. 15. Take ye therefore good heed.] These many cautions note our proneness to this evil above others. This appeareth somewhat in children so delighted with pictures, and in that idolomania of these Jews, of the eastern churches, and of the synagogue of Rome.

Ver. 16. The likeness of male or female.] As the blind Ethnics did, concluding their petitions with that general, Dii, Deaeque omnes. {a}

{a} Servius.

Ver. 17. The likeness of any beast.] Which was a piece of the Egyptian madness. Israel, by being there, had learned to set up one calf, Jeroboam two.

Ver. 18. The likeness of any fish.] As was Dagon, the god of the Philistines, whence he had his name.

Ver. 19. All the host of heaven.] Called the queen of heaven. {#Jer 7:18}

Should be driven.] Or, Drawn by the enticement of the devil, who is ειδωλοχαρης, saith Synisius, a great imagemonger; or by the seduction of others, or of thine own evil heart; for nemo sibi de suo palpet: quisque sibi Satan est, saith a father.

Which the Lord thy God hath divided.] And shall we fight against God, as Jehu did against Jehoram, with his own servants, nay, with those things which he hath given us for common servants to us all?

Ver. 20. But the Lord.] Deliverance commands obedience: Servati sumus ut serviamus,

Ver. 21. And sware that I should not.] So that you have a privilege above me; only beware how you provoke him, as I did, through unbelief.

Ver. 22. But I must die.] This was a sore affiiction to this good man, and is therefore so often mentioned. Cato Major also died three years before the destruction of Carthage, which he had so vehemently urged, and would so gladly have outlived. {a}

{a} Plut.

Ver. 24. For the Lord thy God.] And should therefore be served truly, that there be no halting; and totally, that there be no halving. {#Heb 12:28,29}

Ver. 25. And shalt have remained long.] So that thou thinkest there is no removing thee, thou art so rooted and riveted. Nicephorus Phocas having built a mighty wall, heard from heaven, Though thou built as high as heaven, ενδον το κακον, ευαλωτος η πολις, Sin is within, all will be lost.

Ver. 28. And there ye shall serve gods.] As ye have made a match with mischief, so ye shall have enough of it. Ephraim is joined to idols, &c. See #Ac 7:42.

Ver. 29. But if from thence.] Sweet and sour make the best sauce. Promises and menaces mixed, soonest operate upon the heart. The Sun of Righteousness loves not to set in a cloud; nor the God of consolation to leave his children comfortless.

Ver. 30. Even in the latter days.] This is by some understood of the Messiah’s days, which are the latter times of the world; {#Ho 3:5 1Co 10:11} and they believe that here is pointed at the great and last conversion of the Jews.

Ver. 32. For ask now of the days.] Historiae suntfidae monitrices; great good use is to be made of history, -this holy history especially, whereof every word is pure, precious, and profitable.

Ver. 37. Therefore he chose.] He chose for his love, and then loved for his choice: after God’s example, deligas quem diligas.

Ver. 39. That the Lord he is God in heaven.] A philosopher {a} could say, that God is a circle, whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere; ubi est Deus? quid dixi miser? sed ubi non est? Where is God? or rather, where is not God? He is higher than heaven, lower than hell, broader than the sea, longer than the earth. Nusquam est et ubique est, quia nec abest ulli, nec ullo capitur loco. {b} He is nowhere, and yet everywhere; far from no place, and yet not contained in any place.

{a} Empedocles.

{b} Bernard.

Ver. 42. That thou mayest prolong thy days.] Hence some Lutherans {a} have gathered that God hath not determined the set period of man’s days, but that it is in men’s power to lengthen or shorten them. But this is against #Job 7:1 14:14 Ec 2:3 Isa 38:5,15. Stat sua cuique dies. Our hairs are numbered, much more our days.

That the slayer.] {See Trapp on "Nu 35:6"} {See Trapp on "Nu 35:7"} &c.

{a} Heming et alii.

Ver. 44. And this is the law.] That is, This that followeth in the next chapter, whereunto these verses serve for a preface.

Chapter 5

Ver. l. And keep, and do them.] The difference between divinity and other sciences, is, that it is not enough to learn, but we must keep and do it; as lessons of music must be practised, and a copy not read only, but acted. "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening." {#Ps 104:23} He must arise from the bed of sin, and go forth out of himself, as out of his house to his work and to his labour; "working out his salvation with fear and trembling," {#Php 2:12} until the evening, till the sun of his llfe be set.

Ver. 2. God made a covenant with us.] We also have the covenant, the seals, minister, &c. But, alas, are not these blessings amongst us, as the ark was among the Philistines, rather as prisoners than as privileges, rather in testimonium et ruinam quam salutem?

Ver. 3. With our fathers, ] i.e., With our fathers only. Or if it be understood of all the foregoing patriarchs, then it is to be expounded by #Ga 3:17.

Ver. 4. Face to face, ] i.e., Openly, and immediately, by himself, and not by a messenger or mediator. Prosper’s conceit was, that the Israelites were called Iudaei, because they received ius Dei.

Ver. 5. I stood between the Lord, ] sc., After the decalogue delivered by God himself out of the fire. For of that he might say, as once Joseph did to his brethren, "Behold, your eyes see that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you." {#Ge 45:12} And as Paul did to Philemon, {#Phm 1:19} "I Paul," &c., so I the Lord "have written it with mine hand, I will" require "it."

Ver. 6. I am the Lord, &c.] {See Trapp on "Ex 20:1"} &c It is well observed by a reverend writer, {a} that the two tables of the law are in their object answerable to the two natures of Christ. For God is the object of the one, man of the other: and as they meet together in the person of Christ, so must they be united in the affections of a Christian.

{a} Mr Ley’s Pattern of Piety.

Ver. 12. Keep the Sabbath day.] In this repetition of the law some things are transposed, and some words changed, haply to confute that superstitious opinion of the Jews, who were ready to dream of miraculous mysteries in every letter.

Ver. 15. And remember that thou.] It being a figure of our redemption by Christ, and so a fit subject for Sabbath meditations.

Ver. 18. Neither shalt thou commit.] Or, And thou shalt not commit, &c., and so in the following laws; to teach us that the law is but one copulative, {a} as the schools speak. For the sanction indeed, it is disjunctive; but for the injunction, it is copulative. The sanction is, Either do this, or die: but the injunction is not, Either do this or that, but Do this and that too. See #Mt 23:2,3 Eze 18:10,11,13 Jas 2:10. Do everything, as well as anything: to leave one sin and not another, is, with Benhadad, to recover of one disease, and to die of another.

{a} Lex tota est una copulativa.

Ver. 22. These words the Lord spake.] If human laws are ευρημα των θεων, the invention of the gods, as Demosthenes calls them, how much rather this perfect law of God that needs no alteration or addition?

Ver. 23. Even all the heads of your tribes.] These are called "all Israel," {#De 5:1} as being their representatives.

Ver. 25. Why should we die?] But why should they fear to die, since thy had seen that day, that God doth talk with man, and he liveth? It is answered, that they looked upon their present safety as a wonder, but feared what would follow upon such an interview, if continued. And indeed it is still the work of the law to scare men, and to drive them to seek for a Mediator.

We shall die.] If God himself should speak to us, and from heaven, his stillest rhetoric would be too loud for us.

Ver. 27. We will hear it and do it.] This is well said if as well done. Many can think of nothing but working themselves to life, spinning a thread of their own to climb up to heaven by. But that will never be.

Chapter 6

Ver. 1. Now these are the commandments.] Moses having repeated the decalogue, begins here to explain it: and first, the first of the ten, in this present chapter: that first commandment being such, as that therein the keeping of all the other nine is enjoined, as Luther rightly observeth. {a}

{a} Primo praecepto reliquorum omnium observantia praecipitur. —- Luth.

Ver. 2. That thou mightest fear the Lord.] "Fear God and keep his commandments." {#Ec 12:13} "Fear the Lord and depart from evil," {#Pr 16:6} "this is the beginning," {#Pr 1:7} and "end of all" {#Ec 12:13} This is the whole of man, or as some read it, This is the whole man {a} ( ibidem). It is a problem in Aristotle, Why men are credited more than any other creatures? The answer is, Man alone reverenceth God. {b} Deum siquis parum metuit, valde contemnit: huius qui non memorat beueficentiam, auget iniuriam: Not to fear God is to slight him; as not to praise him is to wrong him, saith an ancient.

{a} Hoc est enim totus homo.

{b} οπι θεονς νομιζει μονον.—Fulgentius.

Ver. 3. That it may be well with thee.] Respect may be had to the recompense of reward. We may make it our scope, our aim, {σκοπουντων, #2Co 4:18} though not our highest aim; Moses cast an eye when he was on his journey, {απεβλεπε, #Heb 11:26} he stole a look from glory, and got fresh encouragement.

Ver. 4. The Lord our God is one Lord.] One in Three, and Three in One. Here are three words answering the three persons; and the middle word, Our God, deciphering fitly the second, who assumed our nature, as Galatinus well observeth. Echad, One, may show the unity of essence in this plurality of persons. Others take notice that the last letter of this first word, "hear," is extraordinarily great in the Hebrew, as calling for utmost heed and attention: and so is the last letter in the word rendered "One." {See Trapp on "Ex 34:14"} This last letter, daleth, which usually stands for four, signifieth, say the Hebrews, that this one God shall be worshipped in the four corners of the earth. Therefore whensoever, in their synagogues, they sing or say these word of Moses, they turn their heads to the four corners of the world.

Ver. 5. And thou shalt love.] {See Trapp on "Mt 22:37"} This shows the impossibility of keeping the law perfectly: Ita ut frustra sint sophistae, &c. The true Christian counts all that he can do for God but a little of that much he owes him, and that he could gladly beteem him. But what a wretched monk was that that died with these words in his mouth, Redde mihi aeternam vitam quam debes; Lord, pay me heaven, for thou owest it!

Ver. 6. Shall be in thy heart.] A Bible men should get stamped in their heads, and another in their hearts, as David had. {#Ps 119:11} Knowledge that swims in the head only, and sinks not down into the heart, does no more good than rain in the middle region doth; or than the unicorn’s horn in the unicorn’s head.

Ver. 7. And thou shalt teach them diligently.] Heb., Thou shalt whet or sharpen them, as one would sharpen a stake when he drives it into the ground: or as one would set an edge upon a knife, by oft going over the whetstone. A learned Hebrician observes a near affinity between the word here used and another word that signifies to repeat, and inculcate the same thing. {a} Innuit studium et diligentiam, qua pueris praecepta Dei ineuleari debent, saith Vatablus. Children should be taught the principles that they understand not: (1.) That they might have occasion much to think of the things that are so much and commonly urged; (2.) That if any extremity should come, they might have certain seeds of comfort and direction to guide and support them; (3.) That their condemnation might be more just, if having these so much in their mouths, they should not get something of them into their hearts.

{a} Shanan, acuere, et Shanah, repetere, affines sunt.

Ver. 8. And thou shalt bind them.] {See Trapp on "Mt 23:5"}

Ver. 9. And on thy gates.] In a foolish imitation whereof, the English Jesuits beyond sea have written on their church and college doors in great golden letters, Iesu, Iesu, converte Angliam. Fiat, Fiat. Habent et vespae favos; Wasps also have their honeycombs. There was within a mile of Prague a famous monastery, in the walls whereof the whole Bible was most exquisitely written in letters of gold.

Ver. 11. When thou shalt have eaten and be full.] Saturity oft breeds security; fulness, forgetfulness. The best, when full fed, are apt to wax wanton and will be dipping their fingers sometimes in the devil’s sauce: Ipsis opibus lascivire coepit ecclesia. {a} The moon never suffers eclipse but at the full, and that by the earth’s interposition. The young mules, when they have sucked, turn up their heels and kick at the dam.

{a} Platina.

Ver. 12. Lest thou forget the Lord.] Should we, with the fed hawk, forget our master? Or being full with God’s benefits, like the moon, be then most removed from the sun, from whom she hath all her light? See #Pr 30:8,9. Postquam locupletati sumus, saith Luther, hanc odiosam particulam addimus, Ego feci; We are no sooner grown rich, but we are apt to utter that ugly word, This I may thank myself for.

Ver. 13. And shalt swear by his name.] An oath rightly taken, is a piece of our holy service to God, and may well be reckoned amongst our prayers and other pious performances.

Ver. 14. Thou shalt not go] {See Trapp on "Ex 34:14"}

Ver. 15. A jealous God amongst you.] Let the gods of the heathens be good fellows, our God will endure no co-rivals. He is both a jealous God, and is ever amongst us, so that our faults, our furtas, cannot be hid from his eyes. Now he that dares sin, though he know God looks on, is more impudent in sinning than was Absalom, when he spread a tent upon the top of the house, and went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel and of the sun.

Ver. 16. Ye shall not tempt the Lord.] By prescribing to God, and "limiting the Holy One of Israel," as these men did at Massah. {#Ps 78:41} {See Trapp on "Mt 4:7"} {See Trapp on "Ac 5:9"} {See Trapp on "Ex 17:2"}

Ver. 17. Ye shall diligently keep.] So #Ps 119:4. Howbeit the most that David could do towards it, was to wish well to it. {#De 6:5}

Ver. 20. What mean the testimonies?] Here we have a brief catechism, which is a course and practice of singular profit. Luther scorned not to profess himself discipulum catechismi: and the Jesuits, by the example of our churches, do catechise their novices.

Chapter 7

Ver. 1. And hast cast out many nations.] God did all: "He cast out the heathen before them, and divided them an inheritance by line," &c. {#Ps 78:55} Hence Josephus calls the commonwealth of Israel Θεοκρατειαν. Sic, Regnum Angliae, Regnum Dei. {a}

{a} Polydor. Virgil.

Ver. 2. Nor show mercy unto them.] Their iniquity was now full; {#Ge 15:16} they filled the land with filthiness, from corner to corner; {#Ezr 9:11} they were ripe for the sickle, ready for the vintage of God’s wrath, which now came upon them to the utmost.

Ver. 3. Neither shalt thou make marriages with them.] As neither with any other that were idolatots. {#Ezr 9:1,2}

Ver. 4. For they will turn away thy son.] As the foreign women did Solomon. {#1Ki 11:2-4} What is the reason the Pope will not dispense in Spain or Italy, if a Papist marry a Protestant, yet here they will, but in hope to draw more to them? The tyrant Mezentius tied the living bodies of his captives to the dead; but the dead did not revive by the living, the living rather putrified by the dead. {a}

{a} Corpora corporibus iungebat mortua vivis. -Virgil.

Ver. 5. And break down their images.] Cromwell did notable service here in Henry VIII’s time, by discovering the knavery of Popish priests, and pulling down those images and monuments of idolatry, the rood of grace, the blood of Hales, &c. And in Edward VI’s days, the same day the Popish pictures were publicly burnt at Paul’s Cross, the great victory was gotten by the English at Musselburgh field in Scotland. {a}

{a} Act. and Mon.

Ver. 6. For thou art a holy people.] viz., With a federal holiness; which yet without an inherent holiness in the heart and life, will profit a man no more than it did Dives in the flames that Abraham called him son; or Judas, that Christ called him friend. An empty title yields but an empty comfort at last.

Ver. 8. But because he loved you.] Lo, he loved you, because he loved you. This may seem idem per idem, a woman’s reason. But it excellently shows the ground of God’s love to be wholly in himself.

Ver. 9. The faithful God.] The God of Amen. {#Ps 31:6} "The Amen, the faithful and true witness," {#Re 3:14} that "will not suffer his faithfulness to fail, nor alter the thing that is gone out of his lips," {#Ps 89:33} all his precepts, predictions, promises, menaces, being the issue of a most faithful and righteous will, void of the least insincerity or falsehood. "Thou spakest also with thy mouth, and hast fulfilled it with thy hand, as it is this day," saith Solomon in his prayer. {#1Ki 8:24} Neither could ever any day or age produce one instance to the contrary. The promises are ancient, {#Tit 1:1,2} and yet they never failed; nor the menaces. {#Zep 3:5}

Ver. 10. He will not be slack.] Slow he may be, but sure he will be. Supplicii tarditatem gravitate compensat; { a} The higher he holds his hand, the heavier he will strike. Aries quo altius erigitur, hoc figit fortius. Arcus quo retrahitur longius, hoc iaculatar ulterius. Aqua quae aegre calefit, aegre denus frigescit, &c.

{a} Val, Max.

Ver. 13. And he will love thee.] So he did before, {#De 7:8} but so he will continue to do. See a like expression in #1Jo 5:13, "These things write I unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God."

Ver. 14. Thou shalt be blessed.] There is a μυριομακαριοτης in godliness. {#1Ti 6:6} {See Trapp on "1Ti 6:6"}

Ver. 15. And the Lord.] Health is a sweet mercy; Non est vivere, sed valere vita, { a} A sickly life is a lifeless life. A healthy body is the reward of piety. {#Pr 3:8}

{a} Martial.

Ver. 20. Send the hornet.] {See Trapp on "Ex 23:28"}

Ver. 21. For the Lord thy God is amongst you.] And how many do you reckon him for? as Antigonus said once to his soldiers, when they feared their enemies as more in number.

Ver. 24. Thou shalt destroy their name.] It shall be either buried in oblivion, or if mentioned, it shall be but as the stirring of a sepulchre, which thereby stinketh the more. Solomon reckoneth it for a mercy to a wicked man, when he is buried, to be forgotten in his city. {#Ec 8:10}

Ver. 25. Lest thou be snared.] Lest it prove as the gold of Toulouse, {a} baneful to all that fingered it; or the sepulchre of Semiramis, which they that rifled, expecting to find treasure, met with a deadly poison.

{a} Aurum Tolosanum.

Chapter 8

Ver. 1. All the commandments.] "All" is but a little word, but of large extent. There are magnalia legis , and minutula legis; Look to both the greater and the lesser things of the law. {#Mt 23:23}

Ver. 2. To know what was, ] i.e., To discover and make known to thyself and others. {a} When fire is put to green wood, there comes out abundance of watery stuff that before appeared not. When the pond is empty, the mud, filth, and toads come to light. The snow drift covers many a muckhill; so doth prosperity many a rotten heart. It is easy to wade in a warm bath; and every bird can sing in a sunshine day, &c. Hard weather tries what health, afflictions try what sap we have, what solidity. Withered leaves soon fall off in windy weather; rotten boughs quickly break with heavy weights, &c.

{a} Tentat ut sciat, i.e., ut scire nos faciat. —- Aug.

Ver. 3. And he humbled thee.] Humbled they were, many of them, but not humble: low, but not lowly. Perdiderunt fructum afflictionum, &c. {a}

That he might make thee know.] We never know so well, how good, sweet, and seasonable the Lord is, as when under the cross. Vexatio dat intellecture.

That man cloth not live.] {See Trapp on "Mt 4:4"}

{a} August.

Ver. 4. Thy raiment weaved not old.] It was not the worse for wearing, but grew as their bodies did, as some are of opinion. They needed not to trouble themselves with those anxious thoughts of heathens, what they should eat, drink, or put on. Never was prince served and supplied in such state as these Israelites were.

Ver. 5. That as a man chasteneth his son.] This is reckoned here as a high favour. So Job accounts it, {#Job 7:17,18} and Paul describes it, {#Heb 12:7,8} and Jeremiah prays for it. {#Jer 10:24}

Ver. 6. Therefore thou shalt keep.] As good children are the better for beating, and do gather under the wing of a frowning father.

Ver. 7. That spring out of valleys.] Quantum miraculi sit in admiranda illa fontium perennitate, nemo, credo, Philosophorum satis explicare hactenus potuit. The perennity of springs is a just wonder, and not far from a miracle.

Ver. 8. A land of wheat and barley.] Sumen totius orbis. Strabo basely slandereth this fat and fertile country as dry and barren; but Rabshakeh {#2Ki 18:32} and Tacitus tell us otherwise. The testimony here given of it is above all exception.

Ver. 9. Thou shalt not lack anything in it.] Of the Island of Cyprus it is said, that it sendeth forth great abundance of commodities to other countries, of whom it craveth no help again. {a} It was anciently called Macaria, the Blessed. Marcellinus, to show the fertility of it, saith that Cyprus aboundeth with such plenty of all things, that without the help of any other foreign country, it is, of itself, able to build a tall ship from the keel to the topsail, and so put it to sea, furnished of all things needful. Of Egypt also it is reported, that it is so fruitful a country, Ut cunctos mortales pascere, deos ipsos excipere hospitio salva re posse gloriaretur. It was anciently called publicum orbis horreum, the world’s great barn; as some foreign writers have termed our country the court of Queen Ceres, the granary of the western world, the Fortunate Island, the Paradise of Pleasure, and Garden of God. The worst is, that as Aristotle was wont to tax his Athenians, that whereas they were famous for two things, the best land, and the best laws, frumentis uterentur, legibus nequaquam, they abused their plenty, and lived lawlessly; {b} so it may be said of us, that we live in God’s good land, but not by God’s good laws.

{a} Turk. Hist.

{b} Laert, lib. v. cap. 1.

Ver. 10. Then thou shalt bless.]

“ Rarm fumaut foelicibus arm.”

Solomon’s wealth did him more harm than ever his wisdom did him good. But that should not have been. Solomon’s altar was four times as large as Moses’s, {#Ex 27:1} to teach us, that as our peace and prosperity is more than others, so should our service in a due proportion.

Ver. 11. Beware that thou forget not the Lord.] By casting his words behind thee, {#Ps 50:17} and not considering the operation of his hands. {#Isa 5:12} Fulness breeds this forgetfulness, laden bodies leaden minds.

Ver. 12. And hast built goodly houses.] Haec sunt quae nos invitos faciunt mori. These are the things that make us loath to die, said the Emperor Charles V, to the Duke of Venice, who had showed him the stateliness of his palace and princely furniture.

Ver. 13. When thy silver and thy gold.] Which what is it else but white and red mould, the guts and garbage of the earth? Wonder it is surely, that treading upon it we should so much esteem it. Well, if silver and gold be our happiness, then it is in the earth, and so, which is strange, nearer hell, which the Scripture placeth in the deep, than heaven, which all know to be aloft; and so nearer the devil than God.

Ver. 14. Then thy heart be lifted up.] The devil will easily blow up this blab in the rich man’s heart, whose usual diseases are earthly mindedness and high mindedness. Prosperity makes men proud, secure, impatient. {#Jer 22:21} In rest they contract much rust.

Ver. 15. Who led thee through, &c.] Good turns aggravate unkindnesses, and our offences are increased by our obligations.

Ver. 16. Who fed thee.] God will give his people Pluviam escatilem, et petram aquatilem. {a} He will set the flint abroach, and rain corn from heaven, rather than they shall pine and perish. {#Ps 78:20,24}

{a} Tertul., De Patient.

Ver. 17. My power.] As that great dragon of Egypt, lying at ease in the swollen waters of his Nile, saith, "My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself." {#Eze 29:3 Hab 1:16}

Ver. 19. Ye shall surely perish.] Idolatry is a land desolating sin. {#Jud 5:8}

Chapter 9

Ver. 1. Hear, O Israel.] It was all their business at present to hear, and yet he excites them so to do by an Oyez, as it were. He knew their dulness, and the din that corruption maketh in the best hearts; how soon sated men are with divine discourses, and how little heed they give to the most wholesome exhortations. Let a child be never so busy about his lesson, if but a bird fly by, he must needs look where he lights; so, &c.

Ver. 2. The children of Anak.] Hence seems to come the Greek word, Αναξ, for a king; for these great men were looked upon as so many little kings. {See Trapp on "Ge 6:4"}

Ver. 3. As a consuming fire.] The force whereof is violent and irresistible. "Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? Woe unto us! who shall deliver us?" &c., said those crest-fallen Philistines at the sight of the ark. {#1Sa 4:8} So, "The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites: who among us," say they, "shall dwell with this devouring fire?"—meaning God; -"who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" {#Isa 33:14}

Ver. 4. For my righteousness.] We are all apt to weave a web of righteousness of our own, to spin a thread of our own to climb up to heaven by, to set a price upon ourselves above the market, to think great thoughts of ourselves, and to seek great things for ourselves. Caelum gratis non accipiam, saith one merit monger, I will not have heaven for nothing; and, Redde mihi aeternam vitam quam debes, saith another; Give me heaven, for thou owest it me. How blasphemous is that direction of the Papists to dying men, Coniunge, Domine, obsequium meum cum omnibus quae Christus passus est prome: Join, Lord, my righteousness with Christ’s righteousness! How much better was it with those ancient Papists here in England, to whom, upon their deathbeds, the ordinary instruction appointed to be given was, that they should look to come to glory, not by their own merits, but alone by the virtue and merit of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ; that they should place their whole confidence in his death only, and in no other thing! {a} &c. Those justiciaries, that seek to be saved by their works, Luther fitly calls the devil’s martyrs; they suffer much, and take much pains to go to hell, and by their much boasting, Haec ego feci, haec ego feci, they become no better than Faeces, saith he wittily. It is a good observation of a reverend divine, {b} that the Church in the Canticles is nowhere described by the beauty of her hands or fingers. Christ concealeth the mention of her hands—that is, of her works—(1.) Because he had rather his Church should abound in good works in silence, than boast of them, especially when they are wanting, as Rome doth; (2.) Because it is he alone that "worketh all our works for us." {#Isa 26:12 Ho 14:8}

{a} Dr Ussher, Ser. on #Eph 4:13.

{b} Mr Cotton, on Cantic., p. 217.

Ver. 6. Understand therefore.] We are wondrous apt to wind ourselves into the fool’s paradise of a sublime dotage, upon our own worth and righteousness; otherwise, what need so many words here to one and the same purpose? The Scripture doth not use to kill flies with beetles, to cleave straws with wedges of iron, to spend many words where is no need.

Ver. 7. Ye have been rebellious against the Lord.] Nothing is so hard as to be humbled; for man is a proud, cross creature, that would be something at home, whatever he is abroad; and comes not down without a great deal of difficulty. Hence it is, that Moses so sets it on here, and with one knock after another drives this nail home to the head, that he might cripple their iron sinews, bring their stiff necks to the yoke of God’s obedience, and make them know that he was Jehovah, when he had "wrought with them for his name’s sake, not according to their wicked ways, nor according to their corrupt doings." {#Eze 20:43,44,36:31,32}

Ver. 8. The Lord was angry.] God is said to be angry when he doeth as an angry man useth to do: viz., (1.) Chide; (2.) Smite: revenge being the next effect of anger.

Ver. 9. When I was gone up into the mount.] Sins are much aggravated by the circumstances; and every sin should swell as a toad in our eyes: we should bring them out, as they took the vessels of the temple, {#Ezr 8:34} "by number and by weight." See #Le 16:21; "all their transgressions in all their sins."

Ver. 10. {See Trapp on "Ex 31:18"}

Ver. 12. Arise] From off thy knees; the petitioner’s posture. St James, they say, {a} had knees as hard as camels’ knees, with continual kneeling: and Hilarion was found dead in his oratory with knees bent, eyes and hands lifted up. {b} Father Latimer, during his imprisonment, was so constant and instant in prayer, that ofttimes he was not able to rise without help. {c}

{a} Euseb.

{b} Jerome.

{c} Act. and Mon., fol. 1579.

Ver. 14. Let me alone.] {See Trapp on "Ex 32:10"}

Ver. 15. So I returned.] Yet not till he had first prayed and prevailed. {#Ex 32:1,14}

Ver. 16. Ye had turned aside quickly.] Levitate prorsus desultoria. Apostates have religionem ephemeram, being constant in nothing but in their inconstancy.

Ver. 17. And cast them.] {See Trapp on "Ex 32:19"}

Ver. 18. Forty days and forty nights.] This some understand of a second fasting so long together, after the people had set up the golden calf. See #De 9:25.

Ver. 19. For I was afraid.] Moses was more troubled for the people than the people were for themselves; so was Daniel for Nebuchadnezzar, {#Da 4:10} and Nahum for the Chaldeans. {#Na 3:16}

Ver. 22. And at Taberah.] Catalogues should be kept of our sins, and oft perused, yea, though they be pardoned, that we may renew our repentance, and keep our souls humble, supple, and soluble.

Ver. 24. You have been rebellious.] Here he repeats the former charge, {#De 9:7} which now he had sufficiently proved against them: we must object no more against any man than we are able to make good. If Erasmus had lived to these days, very shame would have crammed those words of his down his throat: Ubicunque regnat Lutherus, ibi literature est interitus: duo tantum quaerunt, censure et uxorem. {a} Wheresoever Luther’s doctrine takes place, learning is little set by; all the care is for a wife, and for wealth. Os durum!

{a} Erasmus, Ep. ad Bilibald.

Ver. 25. Thus I fell down.] The three former verses come in by a parenthesis. Here he returns again to the history of his interceding for them the second time.

Ver. 26. I prayed.] And he had a hard tug of it; but prayer is the best lever at a dead lift.

Ver. 29. Yet they are thy people.] In praying to God we must "fill our mouths with arguments," and urge them lustily.

Chapter 10

Ver. 1. Like unto the first.] Which Moses had broken; to show how we in our nature had broken the law, and could not be saved by the keeping of it. This Christ, our true Moses, repairs again, writing the law, not in tables of stone, but in the heart of believers, and enabling them in some good measure to keep it, {#Joh 1:17} walking, as Luther phraseth it, in the heaven of the promise, but in the earth of the law; that in respect of believing, this of obeying.

Ver. 2. Which thou brakest.] {See Trapp on "Ex 34:1"}

Ver. 3. And I made an ark.] In its use far beyond that Persian casket embroidered with gold and pearl, which Alexander reserved for Homer’s Iliad.

Ver. 4. Out of the midst of the fire.] The law was given in fire; it is "a law of fire," {#De 33:2} given by God, who is "a consuming fire," {#Heb 12:29} and hath a tribunal of fire, {#Eze 1:27} and shall plead with transgressors in flames of fire; {#Isa 66:15,16} the trial of our works shall be by fire. {#1Co 3:13} "Let us therefore have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear." It is the apostle’s use. {#Heb 12:28}

Ver. 5. And put the tables in the ark.] Which was thenceforth called "the ark of the testimony."

Ver. 6. And the children of Israel.] Here are some seeming contradictions betwixt this place and that of #Nu 33:31,32. But though they seem to be, as the accusers of Christ, never a one speaking like the other, yet, if we well observe the text, and consult with interpreters, we shall find them, like Nathan and Bathsheba, both speaking the same things.

Ver. 7. A land of rivers of water.] A rare thing in a dry desert. Lysimachus sold his crown for a less matter.

Ver. 8. At that time, ] viz., While they were yet at Mount Sinai; for the two former verses are inserted by a parenthesis.

The Lord separated the tribe of Levi.] This setting up of the ministry amongst them is reckoned as a sign of God’s singular love to them. And so it is to us, no doubt, albeit a late pamphleteer {a} makes that sacred and tremendous function of the ministry to be as mere an imposture, as very a mystery of iniquity, as arrant a juggle, as the Papacy itself. Now the Lord rebuke thee, Satan.

To stand before the Lord.] As also the angels do. {#Lu 1:19}

{a} The Compassionate Samaritan.

Ver. 12. What doth the Lord thy God require of thee?] Beneficium postulat officium; mercy calls for duty.

Require of thee.] Or, as some render it, Request of thee; the word here used signifieth, petere more mendicorum, to crave as beggars do; and so it is used in #Ps 109:10.

But to fear the Lord.] This is the totum hominis {#Ec 12:13} the bonum hominis {#Mic 6:8} the unum necessarium {#Lu 10:42} the primum quaerendum {#Mt 6:33}

Ver. 14. Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens.] Not the air and sky only, the visible heaven, but the third heaven, whereof no natural knowledge can be had, nor any help by human arts, geometry, optics, &c. For it is neither aspectable nor movable.

The earth also.] So that there was no necessity of pitching upon thee for his peculiar, since he had choice enough before him.

Ver. 15. To love them.] Because he loved them, as #De 7:7,8. {See Trapp on "De 7:8"}

Ver. 16. Circumcise therefore.] Deus iubendo iuvat. Set about this work in God’s strength, and pray that the heaven may answer the earth. {#Ho 2:21} For it is a work that must be done "without hands." {#Col 2:11} Beg of God to thrust his holy hand into our bosom, and to pull off that filthy foreskin; urge him with his promise; {#De 30:6} doubt not of his power: lex iubet, gratia iuvat, { a} &c.

{a} August, in Exod., quaest. 55.

Ver. 17. Is God of gods.] And will be served like himself.

Ver. 19. Love ye therefore the stranger.] And to show yourselves the friends of God. For idem velle et idem nolle, ea demum vera amictia est. {a} Friends are like-minded.

{a} Cicero.

Ver. 20. To him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name.] Cleaving will call for swearing. {#Ac 11:23} Broken bones must have strong bands to close them fast again. A crazy piece of building must be crampt with iron bars, to keep it up from tottering.

Ver. 21. He is thy praise.] Thy praised One, {#Ps 18:3} or, Thy praiseworthy One. He is also thy chief glory and praise amongst all nations, who shall admire thy happiness in such a God.

Chapter 11

Ver. 1. Therefore thou shalt love the Lord.] Cos amoris amor. Ara amorem illius, saith Bernard. Not to love them that so loved us, is to be worse than a publican, more hard-hearted than a Jew. {#Mt 5:46} That the three children burned not in the furnace was a miracle, {#Da 3:25} so it is that men so favoured love not God.

Ver. 2. And which have not seen.]

“ Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,

Quam quae sunt oculis commissa fidelibua’’—Horat.

He speaks unto them as to eye-witncsses; and those that have such evidence and self-experience are usually more affected than those that have things by hearsay only. "Mine eye affects my heart." {#La 3:51}

Ver. 4. Hath destroyed them unto this day, ] i.e., Hath so destroyed and dismayed them, that to this day we hear no more of them: as the Romans so quailed and quelled King Attalus, that he made a law that none of his successors should make war with that state for ever.

Ver. 5. And what he did unto you.] A diary should be diligently kept of what God does for us, {#Ps 102:18} for the help of our slippery memories, and the stirring up of our dull hearts to a contention in godliness.

Ver. 6. Dathan and Abiram.] Who were Reubenites; and therefore discontented, say the Jewish doctors, because the birthright was taken from Reuben, for his incest, and given to Judah and Joseph. Korah is here, though not mentioned yet, neither excluded nor excused.

Ver. 9. And that ye may prolong.] {See Trapp on "De 4:40"}

Ver. 10. And wateredst it with thy foot.] Fetching and carrying water, called therefore the water of their feet, as our life is called, "the life of our hands," {#Isa 57:10} because maintained with the labour of our hands.

Ver. ll. And drinketh water of the rain of heaven.] God crowning the year with his goodness, and his paths dropping fatness. {#Ps 65:10-12} In the Hebrew it is, Thy chariot-wheel tracks; for the clouds are God’s chariots, {#Ps 104:3} in which water is bound. {#Job 26:8} How they are upheld, and why they fall here and now, we know not, and wonder. The Egyptians used in a profane mockery to tell other nations, that if God should forget to rain, they might chance to starve for it; they thought the rain was of God, but not their river Nile. See #Eze 29:3,9 Isa 19:5,6.

Ver. 12. Which the Lord thy God careth for.] Deus sic curat universa, quasi singula; sic singula, quasi sola. {a}

From the beginning of the year.] How easy were it for God to starve us all, by denying us a harvest or two!

{a} August.

Ver. 13. And it shall come to pass.] This passage of Scripture following, the Jews read daily in their families, as Maimonides reporteth.

Ver. 14. That I will give you the rain.] Rain God gives to all by a providence, {#Ac 14:17 Job 38:26} but to his Israel by virtue of a promise, whereby they might "live, not as by bread only, but as by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

Ver. 16. That your heart be not deceived.] Having first deceived itself; for "the heart is deceitful above all things," {#Jer 17:9} and may say to many, as the heart of Apollonius the tyrant seemed to say to him, who dreamed one night, that he was flayed by the Scythians, and boiled in a caldron, and that his heart spake to him out of the kettle and said, Εγω σοι τουτων αιτια, It is I that have drawn thee to all this. {a} Those in hell cry so.

{a} Plut.

Ver. 17. And he shut up the heaven.] The keys of heaven, of the heart, of the womb, and of the grave, God keeps and carries under his own belt, as we may say.

Ver. 18. In your heart.] Yea, upon your heart, {#Isa 47:7 57:11} so as they may sink thereinto, {#Lu 9:44} as the best balm cast into water sinks to the bottom.

Ver. 19. Teach them your children.] {See Trapp on "De 6:7"}

Ver. 21. As the days of heaven, ] i.e., As long as the world standeth. Hence haply we may conceive hope of the repentance of the Jews, and their re-establishment in this Promised Land.

Ver. 26. A blessing and a curse.] With the way to either, that if ye miscarry ye may have none to blame but yourselves. For oft it falls out, that whereas "the foolishness of man perverteth his way, his heart fretteth against the Lord." {#Pr 19:3}

Ver. 29. Put the blessing upon mount Gerizim.] That is, Pronounce it there. See #Jos 8:33. Hence the Samaritans built their temple on this mount as a blessed place, and there worshipped they knew not what {#Joh 4:20,22} calling themselves, Those that belong to the blessed mount.

Chapter 12

Ver. 1. These are the statutes.] Here Moses begins to comment upon the second commandment of the law. {See Trapp on "De 6:1"}

Ver. 2. Ye shall utterly destroy.] This clause of this law is judicial, peculiar only to the Jews, saith a grave interpreter; as being chiefly intended to prevent their worshipping God in any other place than that one that he had appointed, to which we in the days of the gospel are not tied. See #De 12:5,6. It was a temporary ordinance, saith another, and a part of Moses’s polity, now abrogate.

Ver. 3. And ye shall hew down.] As was here done notably in King Edward VI’s days, notwithstanding the withstandings of the rude rabble, which more regarded commotioners than commissioners, and were more guided by rage than by right, &c. {a} So that as one Mr Body, a commissioner, was pulling down images in Cornwall, he was suddenly stabbed into the body, by a priest, with a knife.

{a} Life of Edward VI, by Sir John Heywood.

Ver. 4. Ye shall not do so.] As wicked Ahaz did, {#2Ch 28:24} by the advice and help of Uriah, that turn-coat, {#2Ki 16:10-12} who had once passed for a faithful witness, {#Isa 7:2} but afterwards proved a factor for the devil.

Ver. 5. And thither shalt thou come.] In token of a holy communion with God.

Ver. 6. Heave offerings of your hands.] For none might appear empty handed before the Lord.

Ver. 7. And there ye shall eat before the Lord.] Lo, this ye shall have of God’s hand, as a recompense of all your charge and pains, ye shall feast before him with joy. This made those good souls go bodily on "from strength to strength"; though they took many a weary step, yet their comfort was, that they should "every one of them in Zion appear before the Lord." {#Ps 84:7} This was the sweetmeats of that feast; other dainty dishes there might be, but this was the banquet.

Ver. 9. For ye are not as yet come to the rest.] No more are any of us indeed, till we come to that "rest which remaineth for the people of God." {#Heb 4:3,8-10} The ark was transportative till settled in Solomon’s temple; so till we come to heaven, are we in continual unrest.

Ver. 10. So that ye dwell in safety.] Having peace both external and internal, of country and of conscience. {a}

{a} Regionis et religionis,

Ver. 11. Your choice vows.] Your voluntary vows, and of your choicest commodities, the very best of the best.

Ver. 12. And ye shall rejoice.] No one duty is more pressed in both the Testaments, than this of rejoicing in the Lord always, but specially in his immediate services. And the contrary is complained of in #Mal 2:13, and sorely threatened in #De 28:47.

Ver. 13. Take heed.] See #De 11:16 Le 17:4.

Ver. 14. But in the place.] This taught them unity and uniformity in divine worship; as also that there was but one only way to obtain pardon of their sin, and acceptance of their services, viz., by Jesus Christ, of whom their tabernacle and temple was a type.

Ver. 15. According to the blessing.] God allows his not only a sufficiency, but an honest affluency, so they keep within the bounds of their ability.

Ver. 16. Only ye shall not eat.] {See Trapp on "Ge 9:4"}

Ver. 19. That thou forsake not the Levite.] But look to his livelihood; since, Ad tenuitatem beneficiorum necessario sequitur ignorantia sacerdotum; small allowances make either ignorant or negligent ministers. {a}

{a} Panormitan.

Ver. 20. Thou mayest eat flesh.] Only it is noted as a fault to "feed without fear." {#Jude 1:12} And flesh mongers are taxed by Solomon. Nos etiam animas incarnavimus, saith an ancient, complaining of the arrogance of his times.

Ver. 22. Even as the roebuck, ] i.e., As common and profane meats; for these creatures were rejected for sacrifice.

Ver. 25. Thou shalt not eat it.] Who can ever think any commandment of God to be light or little, when this of not eating the blood is charged with so much strictness? The minutula of the law, as well as the magnalia, must be carefully heeded and practised.

Ver. 26. Go unto the place.] Far off though it be, yet go thou must thither with thy sacrifices; though at home thou mayest kill and eat for thine own repast and refreshing.

Ver. 28. And with thy children after thee.] Whose comfort they that seek not, are peremptores potius quam parentes, rather parricides than parents. {a}

{a} Bern., Epist., i. 1.

Ver. 32. Thou shalt not add thereto.] To add anything to the Word of God, saith Theodoret, is bold madness; but to open those things by the Word, that in the Word are more darkly delivered, is both lawful and laudable.

Chapter 13

Ver. 1. If there arise among you a prophet.] A public deceiver, that shall boldly obtrude upon you his erroneous opinions for divine oracles, seeking to drag disciples after him, {#Ac 20:29} such as of late times were Servetus, Socinus, Arminius, Vorstius, Pelargus the first Anabaptist, Istolius Agricola the first Antinomian; H. N., that is, Henry Nicolas of Leyden, the first Familist. Howbeit Gerson tells us of a woman, one Maria de Valentiana, that had lately, before his relation, written a book with incredible subtlety, concerning the prerogative and eminence of divine love, to the which whatever soul had attained, is, according to her, let loose from all the law of God’s commandments.

Ver. 2. And the sign or the wonder come to pass.] For so it may happen by divine permission, for the exposing and shame of hypocrites; as when Jannes and Jambres turned water into blood, or at least seemed to do so. {#Ex 7:22}

Ver. 3. Thou shalt not hearken.] Heretics have their pythanology, their good words and fair speeches, wherein they can vent a spittle of diseased opinions, and whereby they deceive the hearts of the simple. {#Ro 16:18} It is not safe, therefore, to hear them, or hold discourse with such, lest they insinuate and infect us, as the Montanists did Tertullian; as the Valentinians did various well-affected Christians; as Acacius the heretic did Anastasius, second Bishop of Rome, A.D., 497, who sought to rectify him. It is reported of Placilla the good Empress, that when Theodosius, senior, desired to confer with Eunomius, she dissuaded her husband very earnestly, lest being perverted by his speeches he might fall into heresy {a} "Keep thee far from an evil matter," saith Solomon. "Mark those that make divisions, and avoid them," saith Paul. {#Ro 16:17} And again, "There are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, …, whose mouths must be stopped," &c. {#Tit 1:11}

{a} Sozomen, lib. vii. cap. 7.

Ver. 4. Ye shall walk after the Lord.] A special antidote against apostasy from the truth, {#2Pe 3:17,18} whereas those that have "put away a good conscience, do, as concerning faith, easily make shipwreck." {#1Ti 1:19}

Ver. 5. Shall be put to death.] This power is still in the Christian magistrate, to inflict capital punishment on gross heretics; such as was Servetus at Geneva, and Campian here, who spider-like was swept down by the hand of justice, and drew his last thread in the triangle of Tyburn, as the historian wittily phraseth it. {a} Quid Imperatori cum ecclesia? was a question moved by the old Donatists. Libertas prophetandi, is much challenged by the Arminians, and other sectaries. But if in matter of religion every man should think what he lists, and utter what he thinks, and defend what he utters, and publish what he defends, and gather disciples to what he publisheth, this liberty, or licentiousness rather, would soon be the bane of any church.

{a} Speed’s Hist of Eng., 1176.

Ver. 6. Thy friend, which is as thine own soul.] Amicitia fit tantum inter binos qui sunt veri, et bonos qui sunt pauci.

Entice thee secretly, saying.] Christ found the devil in Peter, persuading him to spare himself. Cassianus reports of a young man that had given himself up to a Christian life, and his parents, misliking that way, wrote letters to him to dissuade him, which when he knew, he would not once open them, but threw them in the fire. Mention is also made in ecclesiastical history, of one Phileas, a nobleman and constant martyr, who going to execution, seemed as one deaf at the persuasions, and blind at the tears of his dearest friends: as the waters use to break themselves on a rock, so was he inflexible.

Ver. 9. Kill him, ] i.e., Deliver him up to the magistrate to be killed; for he bears not the sword in vain, like St Paul in a glass window, or George on a signpost.

Ver. 10. To thrust thee away.] By force, not of arms, but of arguments; as the Valentinians, Qui prius persuadebant quam docebant. {a} Thus Jeroboam is said to have driven Israel from following the Lord. {#1Ki 14:16}

{a} Tertull.

Ver. 12. If thou shalt hear say.] Rumours are not always to be credited, nor always to be contemned.

Ver. 13. Children of Belial.] Renegade are the worst of men. See #1Jo 2:19. Rabshakeh is held such a one; so Bertius, Tilenus, Staphilus, &c.

Chapter 14

Ver. 1. Ye are the children of the Lord.] Ye should therefore do nothing unworthy of such a Father. Antigonus being invited to a place where a notable harlot was to be present, asked counsel of Menedemus what he should do? He bade him only remember that he was a king’s son, and do accordingly. {a}

Ye shall not cut. {See Trapp on "Le 19:28"}

{a} Plut.

Ver. 2. For thou art.] {See Trapp on "De 7:6"}

And the Lord hath chosen thee.] Hence all thy holiness. The maids were first purified, before Ahasuerus chose one; but here it is otherwise. {#Eph 5:25,26}

Ver. 3. Thou shalt not eat any abominable.] {See Trapp on "Le 11:1"} &c. This law taught them to abstain from communion with wicked men, in whom are found the malignities and evil properties of all other creatures. {#Ac 10:13,17,20,28} They feed hard on sin, the devil’s excrement; as the Tartars eat the carrion, carcasses of horses, camels, asses, cats, dogs, yea, when they stink and are full of maggots, and hold them as dainty as we do venison.

Ver. 5. The hart and the roebuck.] These were dainties fit for a king. {#1Ki 4:23} Rice and mutton is the cheer wherewith the great Turk entertaineth foreign ambassadors, and that so plainly and sparingly dressed, as if they would give check to our gormandise and excess.

And the wild ox.] Pliny saith, {a} that there are wild creatures answerable to all that are tame: like as others say there is no living creature on earth, but there are fishes of the same sort found in the sea, and those all harmless.

{a} Plin., lib. viii. cap. 53.

Ver. 6. That parteth the hoof.] {See Trapp on "Le 11:3"}

Ver. 21. Thou shalt not seethe, ]{ See Trapp on "Ex 23:19"}

Ver. 22. Thou shalt truly tithe.] He seems to mean that second tithe, wherewith they were to feast before the Lord, and not the tithe given to the Levites. {#Nu 18:24}

Ver. 23. That thou mayest learn, ] A man cannot converse with God, but he shall learn something. Semper a te doctior redeo, said he to his friend. Moses came from the mount with his face shining. Compare #Ec 8:1.

Ver. 29. That the Lord thy God, &c.] Not getting, but giving, is the way to thrive in the world.

Chapter 15

Ver. 1. At the end of every.] This Sabbatical year signified the year of grace, the kingdom of Christ, wherein all Israelites indeed are discharged of their debts. {#Mt 6:12} {See Trapp on "Mt 6:12"}

Ver. 2. He shall not exact it.] For that seventh year at least, because there was neither sowing nor reaping that year; how then could the poor pay their debts? We must all "put on bowels of mercy, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another," &c. {#Col 3:12,13}

Ver. 3. Of a foreigner.] To show that none that are alienated from the life of God, or a godly life, have remission of sin by Christ: "he sanctifies all whom he justifies." Compare #Ro 11:26 Isa 59:20.

Ver. 4. Save when there shall be no poor.] Here, as in sundry other places of the new translation, the margin is better than the text, as giving a good reason of the former law, To the end that there be no poor amongst you, that is, extreme poor by your exactions. Of a cruel creditor it is said, {#Ps 10:9} that "he lieth in wait to catch the poor; he doth catch the poor when he draws him into his net," that is, into bonds, debts, mortgages, as Chrysostom expounds it.

Ver. 7. Thou shalt not harden thy heart.] But "draw out thy soul to the hungry." {#Isa 58:10} Many have iron bowels and withered hands. See my "Commonplace of Alms."

Ver. 8. Thou shalt surely lend him.] {See Trapp on "Mt 5:42"}

Ver. 9. And he cried unto the Lord.] Who is the poor man’s king, as James V of Scotland was termed for his charity.

Ver. 10. Thine heart shall not be grieved.] {See Trapp on "2Co 9:7"}

The Lord thy God shall bless thee.] See #Pr 19:17; and "Alms," ubi supra.

Ver. 11. For the poor.] {See Trapp on "Mt 26:11"} Aged and impotent poor, whose misery moves compassion without an orator; called here our poor, as well as our brethren.

Ver. 12. In the seventh year, ] viz., Since he was sold unto thee.

Ver. 16. Then thou shalt take an awl.] Ut si non horreret servitudinem, horreret saltem ignominiam publicam: If we can bear reproach for Christ, it is an argument we mean to stick to him, as this bored servant to his master.

Chapter 16

Ver. 1. And keep the passover.] Every man that seeth another stricken and himself spared is still to keep a passover for himself.

Ver. 3. Even the bread of afliction.] Or, Of poverty; as who should say, poor folk’s bread, illleavened, ill-prepared.

Ver. 4. And there shall be.] {See Trapp on "Ex 12:1"} &c

Ver. 10. With a tribute of a free will offering.] Over and besides the sacrifice appointed for the feast day, {#Nu 18:27,31} and the two loaves with their sacrifices commanded. {#Le 23:17,20} So good cheap is God’s service to us, over what it was to them.

Ver. 12. And thou shalt remember.] It is very good to look back and recognise our former worse condition. Agathocles, king of Sicily, being a potter’s son, would be served only in earthen vessels. Willigis, archbishop of Ments, a wheelwright’s son, hung wheels, and the tools wherewith they were made, around his bedchamber, and had these words written upon the walls in very fair characters, Willigis, Willigis, recole uncle veneris, Remember whence thou camest.

Ver. 13. Thou shalt observe.] {See Trapp on "Ex 23:16"}

Ver. 15. Thou shalt surely rejoice.] {See Trapp on "De 12:12"}

Ver. 18. With just judgment.] Heb., With judgment of justice. Ut fiat iustitia, runt coelum. Let heaven and earth be blended together, rather than magistrates be drawn to deal basely. It is reported by a late traveller, that in Zante, over the place of judgment, these two Latin verses are written on the wall in letters of gold:—

“ Hic locus odit, amat, punit, conservat, honorat,

Nequitiam, pacem, crimina, iura, bonos.”

Ver. 19. Neither take a gift.] Rain is good, and ground is good; yet, ex eorum coniunctione fit luturn, by the mixture of those two is made dirt: so giving is kind, and taking is courteous; yet the mixing of them makes the smooth paths of justice foul and uneven.

Ver. 20. That which is altogether just.] Heb., Justice, justice; that is, let pure justice, without mud, run down; let all selfish affections be strained out.

Chapter 17

Ver. 1. Thou shalt not sacrifice.] {See Trapp on "Le 22:20"}

Ver. 2. That hath wrought wickedness.] Idolatry is wickedness with a witness. Such was the venom of the Israelitish idolatry, that the brazen serpent stung worse than the fiery. Oh that the Lord, as he hath "revealed" that wicked one, so that he would at length "consume him with the spirit of his mouth," {#2Th 2:8} and dung his vineyard with the dead carcass of that wild boar of the forest! He can as easily blast an oak as trample a mushroom. Fiat, fiat.

Ver. 4. And it be told thee.] {See Trapp on "De 13:12"}

And inquired diligently.] Men must be "swift to hear, slow to speak," that is, to censure, or pass sentence. Amongst the Athenians an indictment of any crime was but αιτια: the evidence and conviction made it ελεγχος: the sentence αδικημα. Athanasius passeth for a sacrilegious person, a profane wretch, a bloody persecutor, a blasphemer of God, &c., and was so condemned before he was heard by fourscore bishops in that Pseudosynodus Sardicensis. Sunt quidem in Ecclesia Catholica plurimi mali; sed ex haereticis, nullus est bonus, says Bellarmine: There be many bad men Papists, but not one good to be found among Protestants. The Catholics follow the Bible, saith Hill {a} in his "Quartern of Reasons," but the Protestants force the Bible to follow them; yea, their condemnation is so expressly set down in their own Bibles, saith another Popeling, and is so clear to all the world, that nothing more needs hereto, than that they know to read, and have their eyes in their heads at the opening of their Bible. {b} By the shooting of which bolt, you may easily guess at the archer.

{a} Reas. viii. p. 41.

{b} Gagge, Of the New Gospel: Pref. to Reader.

Ver. 7. Thou shalt put the evil.] Both person and thing. {#1Co 5:13}

Ver. 8. Too hard for thee in judgment, ] i.e., For thee, O judge, who art thereupon to consult with the priests, and by them to be informed of the true sense and meaning of God’s law. For apices iuris non sunt ius. And the Rabbins have a saying, Nulla est obiectio in Lege, quae non habet solutionem in latere. Now the priest’s lips should preserve knowledge, and the law should be sought at his mouth; the high priest also, in some cases, was to inquire, and answer after the judgment of Urim, before the Lord. {#Nu 27:21} This the Pope cannot do, and therefore cannot claim the final determination of all causes and controversies, though his parasites tell him,

“ Oraclis vocis mundi moderaris habenas:

Et meritb in terris diceris esse Deus.”

Ver. 9. And unto the judge, ] i.e., The council of judges, the Synedrion, {#2Ch 19:8} consisting partly of priests and partly of civil magistrates. Amongst the Turks at this day their judges are ever ecclesiastical persons; whereby both orders joined, give reputation one to another and maintenance; for these places of judicature are the only preferment of the priesthood. {a}

{a} Blunt’s Voyage, p. 89.

Ver. 10. According to all that they inform thee, ] viz., Agreeable to the sentence of the law. {#De 17:11} The Jews from this text foolishly seek footing for their traditions, which they so much magnify. {#Mt 15:1,2}

Ver. 14. And shalt say, I will set a king.] A king then they might choose, so they did it orderly. Zuinglius in ea fuit sententia, regna omnia esse electiva, nulla propre successiva et haereditaria. In quo non negamus eum errasse in facto, ut loquuntur. {a}

{a} Rivet. Jesuita Vap.

Ver. 15. Whom the Lord shall choose.] As he did Saul, but especially David and his progeny, types of Christ. {#Ps 2:6}

Ver. 16. He shall not multiply horses.] Lest he be held as our Henry III was, Regni dilapidator, the royal spendthrift.

The Lord hath said.] Not in so many words, but by consequence, when he showed his displeasure against such as would have made them a captain to go back to Egypt. {#Nu 14:4,11}

Ver. 17. Silver and gold.] Lest his exactors receive from his subjects no less sums of curses than of coin; and lest he gather money, the sinews of war, but lose the people’s affection, the joints of peace, as our King John did.

Ver. 18. He shall write him a copy.] The Jews say, that if printing had been found out then, yet was the king bound to write two copies of the law with his own hand, one to keep in the treasury, and another to carry about him. This book of God was David’s delight. {#Ps 119:70} Alphonsus, king of Aragon, is reported to have read over the Bible fourteen times, with Lyra’s notes upon it. Charles the Wise, of France, not only caused the Bible to be translated into French, as our King Alfred translated the Psalter himself into his Saxon tongue, but was also very studious in the Holy Scripture. And that peerless princess, Queen Elizabeth, as she passed in triumphal state through the streets of London after her coronation, when the Bible was presented to her at the little conduit in Cheapside, received the same with both her hands, and kissing it, laid it to her breasts, saying, that the same had ever been her chiefest delight, and should be the rule whereby she meant to frame her government. {a}

{a} Speed’s Hist.

Ver. 19. And it shall be with him.] As his Vade-mecum, his manual, his running library, the man of his counsel. Luther said, he would not live in Paradise without the Bible, as with it he could easily live in hell itself. {a}

{a} Tom. 4, Oper. Latin., p. 424.

Ver. 20. That his heart be not lifted up.] That his good and his blood rise not together as that king of Tyre’s did, {#Eze 28:2} and that Lucifer, son of the morning. {#Isa 14:12,13} See my "Commonplace of Arrogancy." Of Caligula it is said, that there never was a better servant, or a worse lord. Vespasian is said to be the only man that became better by the empire. The most of the emperors grew so insolent, that they got nothing by their preferment, nisi ut citius interficerentur, but to be sooner slain.

Chapter 18

Ver. 1. And his inheritance, ] i.e., Whatsoever by the law belonged to the Lord, as decimae Deo sacrae, &c.

Ver. 4. The firstfruits also.] Pliny tells us, {a} that among the Romans also no man might taste of his own corn, wine, or other fruits, priusquam Sacerdotes primitias libassent, till the priests had offered the firstfruits, and made their use of them.

{a} Plin., Hist., lib. xviii.

Ver. 6. With all the desire of his mind.] To do God better service. A good heart holds the best he can do, but a little of that much that he could gladly give the Lord, and is still devising what to do more. {#Ps 116:12}

Ver. 8. Besides that.] He shall not maintain himself of his own private stock, but live of the holy things of the temple.

Ver. 10. That maketh his son.] {See Trapp on "Le 18:21"}

Ver. 11. Or a necromancer.] Bellarmine and other Papists play the necromancers, when they would prove a Purgatory from the apparitions of spirits, that tell of themselves or others there tormented.

Ver. 13. Thou shalt be perfect.] {See Trapp on "Mt 5:48"} In the original there is a bigger tau than ordinary in the word Tamim, rendered perfect, to show, say Hebricians, that we must keep the whole law of God from the first letter thereof to the last—tau is the last letter of the alphabet—and this we must do constantly to the very last, and with the whole man. But how can this be done otherwise than by running to Christ, and in an evangelical way? In sincerity and integrity we must hate such wicked persons, even as God also hateth them. {#Ps 139:21-24} {Hebrew Text Note}

Ver. 14. Hath not suffered thee so to do.] He hath showed thee a more excellent way, and kept thee from these devoratory evils, as Tertullian calleth them; so ordering the matter, that "that evil one toucheth them not" with any deadly touch. {#1Jo 5:18} For either he suffers not his to be tempted above strength, {#1Co 10:13} or else he withholds the occasion, when temptation hath prevailed to procure consent and purpose, &c.

Ver. 15. Like unto me.] Both in the participation of nature and of office: a true man, and a true Mediator. Similes they are, but not pares: Christ being "worthy of more glory than Moses," and why, see #Heb 3:3-6 7:22 9:15.

Ver. 18. And he shall speak unto them.] Christ is that palmoni hammedabbar {#Da 10:5,6} that excellent speaker that spake with authority, and so as never man spake, being "mighty in word and deed." See my "True Treasure," p. 1.

Ver. 22. Thou shalt not be afraid.] Though he speak "great swelling words of vanity," {#2Pe 2:18} millstones and thunderbolts, as Hacket here did. {a}

{a} Camden’s Elisab., fol. 403.

Chapter 19

Ver. 3. Thou shalt prepare thee a way.] A direct, plain, fair highway: such a way must ministers prepare and pave for their people to Christ, the true asylum, by giving them "the knowledge of salvation by the remission of their sins." {#Lu 1:76,77}

Ver. 4. Whom he hated not in time past.] There is, first, a passion of hatred. This is a kind of averse ness and rising of the heart against a man, when one sees him, so that he cannot away with him, nor speak to him, nor look courteously or peaceably upon him, and by his goodwill he would have nothing to do with him. Secondly, there is a habit of hatred, when the heart is so settled in this alienation and estrangement, that it grows to wish, and desire, and seek his hurt. Both these must be mortified.

Ver. 5. And live.] So he keep within his city of refuge till the death of the high priest. {See Trapp on "Nu 35:25"}

Ver. 6. While his heart is hot.] As Nebuchadnezzar’s oven—viz., with anger and grief, and such like passions; which, like heavy bodies down steep hills, once in motion move themselves, and know no ground but the bottom.

Ver. 8. And give thee all the land.] From Nile to Euphrates; {#Ge 15:18} which by reason of their sins he never did. Pray we with Jabez, {#1Ch 4:10} "Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast (my heart), and that thine hand might be with me," &c. "When thou shalt have enlarged mine heart," saith David, "then will I run the way of thy commandments." {#Ps 119:32}

Ver. 11. But if any man hate his neighbour.] As Cain did Abel, as Esau Jacob, as Absalom Amnon; as Dr Story did Queen Elizabeth, whom he cursed daily in his grace at board; {a} as Tyrone did the English, strangling some of his own men for no other reason but because they fed on English bread; howbeit he never spake of the queen but with honour; yea, the profane wretch styled himself cousin to God, enemy to all the world, and friend to the Queen of England. {b}

{a} A.D. 1567.—Ibid.

{b} Speed.

Ver. 12. And fetch him thence.] From the altar to the halter, from the palace to the gallows. {#Pr 28:17}

Ver. 14. Thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old, &c.] Erasmus met with an adversary so silly, as to object unto him this text against the new translation of the New Testament: Quasi per terminos, voces intellexisset Spiritus Sanctus atque huius legis violatae illi postulari possent, qui mutant rerum vocabula, { a} Whereas by terms or "landmarks" hero are clearly meant bounds, borders, limits, whereby every man’s inheritance was severed.

{a} Erasm., in Apologiis, p. 637.

Ver. 15. One witness shall not rise up.] Yet, if this one be a faithful witness, Μαρτυς δε πιστος, και εις χρησιμος, saith Aristotle; {a} one faithful witness in some case may suffice, in private offences howsoever: and that our Saviour speaketh of such, {#Mt 18:19} Basil and others are of opinion; if thy brother, a Jew, shall trespass against thee, being a Jew, right thyself by degrees. (1.) Deal with him fraternally, "tell him his fault betwixt thee and him alone"; {#Mt 18:15} (2.) Deal with him legally, "take with thee one or two more"; {#De 19:15} (3.) Deal with him Jewishly; "tell the Church," {#De 19:17} complain to the Sanhedrim; (4.) If he shall neglect to hear them, deal with him heathenishly, i.e., " let him be unto thee as a heathen and a publican"; make benefit of Roman sovereignty, let Caesar’s justice end the difference between you. {b}

{a} Arist., Rhetor., lib. ii.

{b} Mr Lightfoot’s Harmony, p. 143.

Ver. 20. Shall hear and fear.] Others’ woes should be our warnings, others’ sufferings our sermons, yea, standing sermons. {#1Co 10:5-12} God’s house of correction is the school of instruction.

Ver. 21. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.] {See Trapp on "Mt 5:38"}

Chapter 20

Ver. 1. When thou goest out to battle.] It is not unlawful, therefore, to go to war, as Lactantius and some others held; whether it be pro religione vel pro regione: only because it is easier to stir strife than to stop and stint it, — non enim in eiusdem potestate est initium belli, eiusque finis, { a} -war is not rashly to be undertaken, lest it befall men as in the battle between the dragon and the elephant. The dragon sucketh out the blood of the elephant, and the weight of the falling elephant oppresseth the dragon, and so both perish. {b} St Augustine would never pray for such as had willfully and voluntarily thrust themselves into unnecessary wars. {c}

For the Lord thy God is with thee.] And how many reckonest thou him for?—as Antigonus said to his discouraged soldiers. "The Lord is a man of war"; {#Ex 15:3} or, as the Chaldee there expresseth it, "a victor of wars." {#2Ch 32:8} Si Deus pro nobis, &c. {#Ro 8:31}

{a} Salust., in Jugurth.

{b} Plin., lib. viii. cap. 12.

{c} Possid., in Vit. Aug.

Ver. 2. That the priest shall approach.] For some priests ordinarily went along with the army; not to be Tuba rebellionis, as the Papists said of Zuinglius, nor evangelium flammeum praedicare, as they said of Beza, as a common firebrand or fomenter of discord; but to blow the holy trumpets, "that the people might be remembered before the Lord, and saved from their enemies"; {#Nu 10:8,9 2Ch 13:12} and to say unto them, as in #2Ch 19:11, "Deal courageously, and the Lord shall be with the good." The valour of the Gauls was admired by the Romans. It proceeded from that instruction of the Druids, their priests, concerning the immortality of the soul, &c.

Ver. 4. For the Lord your God is he.] Quid metuit homo in sinu Dei positus, Deo armatus? Creatures of an inferior nature will be courageous in the presence of their masters: and shall not men, when they have God with them? Xerxes was wont to pitch his tent on high, and stand looking on his army when in fight, to encourage them. So God.

Ver. 5. And hath not dedicated it.] By prayers, hymns, and other holy solemnities then usual; {#Ne 12:27 Ps 30:1 title} that "the house of David might be as God, as the Angel of the Lord before them." {#Zec 12:8}

Ver. 6. That hath planted a vineyard.] This privilege might encourage men to build and plant, which is good and profitable for the commonwealth, as the apostle speaketh in a like case. {#Tit 3:8}

Ver. 7. That hath betrothed a wife.] A commendable custom, even among heathens also: Placuit, despondi; nuptiis hic dictus est dies, said he in Terence.

Ver. 8. That is fearful and faint hearted.] This cowardly passion dispirits a man, expectorates his manliness, and exposeth him to the cruel mercy of an enemy. Better be temerarious than timorous! "Ye fugitives of Ephraim," is no small brand of dishonour; {#Jud 12:4} besides that melting and trying judgments follow such at heels as account one pair of heels worth two pair of hands. {#Jer 9:3-7} The French fled so fast before the English at the battle of Terwin, that it was called the battle of Spurs. {a}

Lest his brethren’s hearts.] Cowardice is catching, and shows that men, like stags, have great horns, but want hearts.

{a} Paul Jovius.

Ver. 9. Captains of the armies to lead the people.] As Hannibal did, of whom Livy {a} reports, that Princeps proelium inibat, ultimus, conserto proelio, excedebat; he was first in the battle, and last out. And the same is storied of Albert, marquess of Brandenburg: In congressibus prior pugnam iniit, victor h praelio excessit ultimus. {b}

{a} Decad. iii. lib. i.

{b} Bucholc.

Ver. 10. Then proclaim peace unto it.] Heb., Shall call unto it for peace. This hath been the practice of most nations. The Romans sent their caduceum et hastam. The herald was commanded to throw his weapons on the enemy’s ground, with this speech: Ego populusque Rom. hominibus Hermundulis bellum dico facioque: I and the people of Rome bid battle to the Hermunduli. {a} Alexander the Great, when he besieged any city, would send his herald into it with a burning torch in his hand, to proclaim, that if any man would repair and submit himself unto him while that torch continued burning, he should be safe; otherwise they should expect nothing but fire and sword. Tamerlane, when he came against any place, first he hung out a white flag of grace, then a red, and lastly a black flag, to show that now there was no hope of mercy for them. {b} φιλει ο Θεος προσημαινειν; God loves to give warning, saith Herodotus, a heathen. And the Turks are of opinion that God would not prosper them in their assaults, except they first make to their enemies some offer of peace, how unreasonable soever, it forceth not. So they did at the last fatal siege of Constantinople. {c}

{a} Gel., lib. xvi. cap. 4.

{b} Turk. Hist.

{c} Ibid., 344.

Ver. 11. And open unto thee.] As Tournay in France did to our Henry VIII, with ten thousand pound sterling for the citizens’ redemption; yet was it ever till then counted so invincible, that this sentence was engraven over one of the gates, Iannes ton me a perda ton pucellage, thou hast never lost thy maidenhead. {a}

{a} Speed’s Hist of Engl., 1001.

Ver. 13. Thou shalt smite every male thereof.] Let them pay for their pervicacy. So Caesar answered the Adviatici, that he would have spared their city if they had yielded before he had assaulted. {a} And so the Duke of Alva much blamed Prosper Columnus, for receiving a castle upon condition after he had beaten it with the cannon. {b} Howbeit in the Lord Protector’s expedition into Scotland in the reign of Edward VI, one castle, when they understood they were not able to hold out, and that their obstinacy had excluded all hope of pardon, they made petition that they might not presently be slain, but have some time to recommend their souls to God, and afterwards be hanged. This respite being first obtained, their pardon did the more easily ensue. {c}

{a} Si priusquam aries murum attegisset se dedissent. -Coes. II. Gallic.

{b} Connestab VI.

{c} Life of Edward VI., by Sir John Heywood.

Ver. 17. The Hivites and the Jebusites.] The Girgashites are not reckoned among the rest, as neither are they in #Jos 9:1, haply because they accepted of conditions of peace.

Ver. 19. Thou shalt not cut them down.] Fruit trees might not be destroyed. Doth God take care for trees? It was to teach us, that if we bring forth fruit fit for God’s taste and relish, sanctifying God and Christ in our hearts, we shall not be destroyed. Oaks bring forth apples, such as they are, and acorns, but not fit for meat.

Chapter 21

Ver. 1. In the field.] Or elsewhere; the field is instanced, because in places more frequented, murders are not so easily concealed, or so commonly committed.

Ver. 2. Then thy elders.] Some of the Sanhedrim.

Ver. 3. Shall take a heifer.] Signifying Christ, who is the propitiation for his people’s sins, {#1Jo 2:2}

Ver. 4. Which is neither eared nor sown.] That is, that afterwards should neither be tilled nor sown, for horror and hatred of the innocent blood there spilled. So the mountains of Gilboah. {#2Sa 1:6}

Ver. 5. And by their word, ] i.e., According to that exposition that they shall give of God’s Word, and not by any absolute or arbitrary power of their own.

Ver. 6. Shall wash their hands.] An old ceremony, used in this case by the Gentiles also, as the Scholiast upon Sophocles showeth. {See Trapp on "Mt 27:24"}

Ver. 7. And they shall answer.] To the priest’s examining them, and in God’s name making inquisition for blood.

Ver. 8. And the blood shall be forgiven.] The fault of not well watching and guarding the place where the murder was committed. Our King Alfred was the first that divided this kingdom into shires: he ordained also that his subjects should be divided into tens or tithings, every of which severally should give bond for the good abearing of each other. By this course men were not only careful of their own actions, but each had an eye to all the nine, for which he stood bound, as the nine had over him: insomuch that a poor girl might travel safely with a bag of gold in her hand, and none durst meddle with her. The ancientest of these men were called the tithing men.

Ver. 11. And hast a desire unto her.] This was permitted them, as divorce was, ob duricordium. But that is a base passage in the Turk’s Koran, that God did not give men such appetites to have them frustrate, but enjoyed, as made for the gust of man, not for his torment, wherein his Creator delights not; and therefore they hold it lawful for a man to marry as many wives as he is able to maintain.

Ver. 12. And she shall shave her head.] In token that she must renounce her heathenism, and lead a new and holy life. And if she thus consented to marry, she saved her life by it; so do those their souls that consent to Christ, casting away their transgressions, and paring off their superfluities, by the constant practice of mortification.

Ver. 13. A full month.] Worldly sorrow, like a land flood, is for the present impetuous and violent, but time wears it out, not so godly sorrow.

Ver. 14. Because thou hast humbled her.] This expression shows, that God approved not of his fact, which yet he tolerated. By "humbling" her is meant the taking away her honour of chastity; her credit was now gone. The body as a vessel should be "possessed in sanctification and honour." {#1Th 4:4}

Ver. 15. And another hated, ] i.e., Less loved, as #Ge 29:31. {See Trapp on "Ge 29:31"}

Ver. 17. A double portion.] According to this phrase, Elisha {#2Ki 2:9} doth not desire a greater measure of the spirit than rested upon his master; but only to excel the other children of the prophets by a right of the firstborn.

Ver. 20. He is a glutton.] The same word is used for a vile person in #Jer 15:19. And indeed belly-gods {#Php 3:19} are dungy-gods. {#Hab 2:18 Eze 4:12,13} A scavenger, whose office is to empty, is to be preferred before him that liveth but to fill, privies.

Ver. 21. Shall hear and fear.] {See Trapp on "De 19:20"}

Ver. 23. For he that is hanged.] {See Trapp on "Ga 3:13"}

Chapter 22

Ver. 1. Thou shalt not see thy brothers.] No not thine enemies; {#Ex 23:4} for, have we not all one father? {#Mal 2:10} {See Trapp on "Mt 5:44"}

Ver. 5. The woman shall not wear.] Because it is against both natural and civil honesty.

Neither shall a man put on] That is, say stage players and those that plead for them, a man shall not wear women’s apparel ordinarily and daily, so as women used to do. But the word is, Put on, and so they do: the same word is used of David’s putting on Saul’s armour, which yet he put off again presently. So full, saith one hereupon, are our hearts of distinctions and shifts, odia restringere, ampliare favores, to restrain hatreds, as they call them—that is, the commandments that make against them.

Ver. 7. And that thou mayest prolong, &c.] They were commanded to spare the dam, because she represented the parents in bringing up of her young ones; and if their days should be for that prolonged, much more for this. The Hebrews reckon this commandment for the least of all in Moses’s law; and yet such a promise is annexed thereunto.

Ver. 9. And the fruit of thy vineyard be defiled.] Heb., Be sanctified, per antiphrasin, as, auri sacra fames; and Anthony’s fire is ignis sacer. So a whore is called in Hebrew, Kedesha, of kadash, i.e., holiness, {#De 23:17} by a contrary meaning, as most unholy and unchaste.

Ver. 10. Thou shalt not plough.] These laws were made to set forth how God abhorreth all mixtures in religion, and how carefully men should keep their minds from being "corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." {#2Co 11:3}

Ver. 12. Wherewith thou coverest thyself.] Ne in motu aliquid indecorum appareat; Lust and malice are sharp sighted. {#2Sa 11:2 6:20}

Ver. 14. I found her not a maid.] Silvester Petra-sancta Iesuita calumniatur puellas plerunque corruptas nuptui dari in Reformato Evangelio: Quod de Evangelio Romano (ait Rivettus noster) potius dici posset; postquam puellae dementarunt a vobis seductae, et sub vestibus cordulis nodosis spurcis vestris manibus fuerunt ligatae. {a} Papists falsely affirm that few maids amongst us come clear to marriage: cuius contrarium verum est.

{a} Jesuita Vapulans, p. 146.

Ver. 15. Then shall the father of the damsel.] Whose house hereby was dishonested, and by whom his daughter’s honour was to be defended, especially since children’s miscarriages reflect upon the parents, and the daughters sin is the father’s shame.

Ver. 16. And he hateth her.] Which is a monster in nature. {#Eph 5:28,29}

Ver. 17. These are the tokens.] Which in those countries seldom or never failed.

Ver. 19. He hath brought up an evil name.] Which is a kind of murder. {#Eze 22:9} God shall clear the innocency of his slandered servants. {#Ps 37:6 Isa 54:17} As the eclipsed moon, by keeping her motion, wades out of the shadow and recovers her splendour, so shall it be with such.

Ver. 20. And the tokens.] Nor any natural impediment can be proved, as the Hebrews explain it.

Ver. 22. With a woman married.] Adultery was punished with death; because society and the purity of posterity could not otherwise continue amongst men.

Ver. 24. Humbled his neighbour’s wife.] So called, because betrothed, Quia nuptias facit consensus, non concubitus, as the lawyers determine it.

Ver. 25. And the man force her, and lie with her.] It was a speech of Charles V, emperor, If that impure fellow, Farnesius, who being the Pope’s general, had forced many fair ladies, were here present, I would kill him with mine own hand. Nec vocem iracundiorem unquam ex Carolo auditam ferunt. {a} Never was he heard to speak so angrily. The Lacedemonian commonwealth was utterly ruined by a rape committed on the two daughters of Scedasus at Leuctra.

{a} Parei, Hist. Prof. Medulla.

Ver. 29. She shall be his wife.] Howbeit he must be humbled before the Lord, for entering into his ordinance through the devil’s portal.

Chapter 23

Ver. 1. Or hath his privy member cut off.] As it is a barbarous custom at this day among the Turks, to deprive various Christian children of their privities, supplying the uses of nature with a silver quill. This was first brought in among them by Selymus II, out of jealousy lest his eunuchs were not so chaste as they should have been, in keeping their ladies’ beds. {a} Such are usually effeminate, and unfit to bear office.

Shall not enter into the congregation, ] i.e., Shall not go in and out before the people as a public officer. Since such should be drained from the dregs, and sifted from the brans of the vulgar: they should be eminent and eximious persons, higher than the rest, as Saul, by the head and shoulders.

{a} Turk. Hist.

Ver. 2. A bastard shall not enter.] Lest the reproach of his birth render him contemptible, or less courageous; {a} lest some son of Belial set upon him, as Saul did upon his son Jonathan, and say, "Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman." So of the base and beastly woman, "Do not I know that thou hast done this to the confusion of thy mother’s nakedness?" {#1Sa 20:30} The mutinous Janizaries called their Emperor Bajizet II, drunkard, beast, rascal, bastard, bengi, that is, bachelor, or scholar; and told him, moreover, that they would teach him to use his great place and calling with more sobriety and discretion. {b} The English slighted and scorned their William the Conqueror, because a bastard; in spite also to whom, and disgrace to his mother Arlet, they called all whores harlots. The Jews at this day, amongst other opprobrious words, wherewith they spitefully load us, call all Christians Mamzer Gel, that is, heathen bastards. Our Saviour, upon better grounds, called them long since, a bastardly brood. {#Mt 12:39} And their own prophet Isaiah did the same thing long before, {#Isa 57:3,4} and that, for their profane scoffing at the truth and the professors thereof. Yet who so forward as they, to say, "We are not born of fornication," no bastards? {#Joh 8:41}

{a} Utpote qui nati sunt ex prostibulo, plane incerto patre, sed certissima infamia.

{b} Turk. Hist.

Ver. 3. For ever, ] i.e., This law is perpetual and indispensable; so highly displeasing are many mere omissions of duty. Omission of diet breeds diseases, brings death; so here.

Ver. 4. Because they met you not.] As God takes notice of the least courtesy showed to his people, even to a cup of cold water, to requite it, so he doth of the least discourtesy, even to a frown or a frump {See Trapp on "Ge 4:6"} to revenge it.

And because they hired, &c.] {See Trapp on "Nu 22:3"} {See Trapp on "Nu 22:6"}

Ver. 5. Nevertheless the Lord, &c., ] q.d., No thanks to the wicked Moabites, that Balaam blasted thee not; as neither to Balaam, whose tongue was merely overruled by the Almighty, and made to bless those whom he would gladly have cursed. And thus still the Lord orders the world’s disorders, turning dross into gold by a stupendous alchymy, and directing men’s evil actions to a good end. Hence it is that they fulfil—though they intend no such thing, but the satisfying of their own lusts—neither {#Isa 10:5-7} more nor less than "what the hand and counsel of God hath determined." {#Ac 4:28,13:27} Howbeit the hands that nailed Christ to the cross were "wicked hands." {#Ac 2:23} And Judas the traitor received strangling and shedding of bowels, as a "reward of his iniquity, for being guide to them that took Jesus." {#Ac 1:16-18} It was not without God that the kingdom was rent from Rehoboam, {#2Ki 12:19,20} and yet he flatly renounceth it, as well he might, all the evil that was in it. {#Ho 8:4}

Ver. 6. Thou shalt not seek their peace.] Or, Enter into confederacy with them; which when David did, {#2Sa 10:1,2} he was basely abused in his ambassadors. Hannibal’s hatred to the Romans is well known. Tyrone, 1567, so boiled in hatred against the English, that he named a castle that he built, Feoghnegal, that is, "the hatred of the English." {a} Among those wild Irish, the fathers are said to inflict a heavy curse on all their posterity, if ever they should sow corn, build houses, or learn the English tongue.

{a} Camden’s Elisab.

Ver. 7. For he is thy brother.] And therefore to be borne with, though unkind and injurious. Howbeit, Fratrum concordia rara est: "A brother offended is harder to be won," saith the wise man, "than a strong city, and their contentions are like the bars of a castle." {#Pr 18:19} The dissension between England and Scotland consumed more Christian blood, wrought more spoil and destruction, and continued longer than ever quarrel we read of did between any two peoples of the world. {a} The God of Peace prevent the like bloody dissensions again, now mightily endeavoured by the boutefeaus of both nations. Si collidimur, frangimur, If we clash, we perish: dissension is the mother of dissolution, of desolation.

Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian.] But learn of him to return one good turn for another. Egyptii dicuntur, praeter alias nationes, erga bene meritos de se grati; Existimant enim magnum vitae subsidium esse, gratiae retributionem, saith Diodorus. {b} The Egyptians are said to be, above all others, a thankful people, and to look upon thankfulness as a main support of man’s life.

Because thou wast a stranger in his land.] Where, though thou meetest with much hardship, yet thou hadst kind entertainment at first, and after that a subsistence, such as it was. Our Henry VI is said to have been of that happy memory, that he never forgot anything but injuries. Elisha, by a noble revenge, bade set bread and water before the Syrians that came to surprise him.

{a} Daniel’s Hist., 191.

{b} Diod. Sic., lib. i.

Ver. 8. In their third generation.] The Edomites for their consanguinity, -it is some privilege to be allied to the saints, to be "sister’s son to Barnabas," -the {#Col 4:10} Egyptians for their hospitality to God’s firstborn Israel. "God is not unrighteous," &c. {#Heb 6:10} {See Trapp on "Heb 6:10"}

Ver. 9. Then keep thee from every wicked thing.] Walk accurately, as carrying thy life in thy hand; for "the sword devoureth one as well as another," {#2Sa 11:25} it spares neither lord nor losel, as they say. Every soldier therefore should be a saint, ready pressed to meet the Lord, who hath said, "I will be sanctified in all them that draw near unto me." {#Le 10:3}

Ver. 10, Then shall he go abroad.] Go voluntarily, though he be not excluded, as lepers and the like were, Arcta nimis obedientia est, ad legem solummodo iustum esse, saith one: God likes a freewill offering.

Ver. 11. He shall wash himself with water.] See #Le 15 {See Trapp on "Le 15:2"} &c. The Turks at this day pertinaciously and superstitiously retain this ceremony. Before prayers they wash both face and hands, sometimes the head and other parts. Yea, some report of them, that every time they make water, or other unclean exercise of nature, they wash, little regarding who stands by. If a dog do but chance to touch their hands, they wash presently, &c. {a}

{a} Blunt’s Voyage.

Ver. 12. And shalt turn back and cover.] How much more curious should they be of soul defilements? Sin is the soul’s excrements, and defiles a man worse than any excement. {#Mt 7:15,20,23}

Ver. 13. Thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp.] Where he is both van and rear. {#Isa 52:12}

And to give up thine enemies.] Hence the Philistines were so frighted at the sight of the ark. "Let us flee from the face of Israel, for the Lord fighteth for them," said those Egyptians. {#Ex 14:25}

That he see no unclean thing.] Hereby God taught his people holy conversation, that they should keep themselves from their iniquity, as David did {#Ps 18:23} -that is, from such sins as either by their constitution, calling, company, or custom, they are most prone to.

Ver. 15. The servant that is escaped.] A heathen servant that flees for religion, and desires to "join himself to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servant," such must have no cause given them to say, "The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people." {#Isa 56:2,6}

Ver. 17. There shall be no whore.] And what a stinking shame is that, that stews and brothel houses are licensed by the Pope, who reaps no small profit by them? The Papists themselves write with detestation, that at Rome a Jewish maid might not be admitted into the stews of whoredom, unless she would be first baptized; Ut Iudae filiae scortari non liceat, Dei filiae liceat: Imo Israelis filia meretricari non aliter arte possit quam facta per baptismum sanctum Christi sorer et filia. {a}

Nor a Sodomite of the sons of Israel.] {See Trapp on "Ge 19:5"} Pythagoras’s precept, πων κυαμων απεχεσθαι, was intended against this kind of horrid and unnatural uncleanness, κυαμοι, signifying somewhat else besides beans. But what a beast was Pope Sixtus Quintus, qui lupanar utriusque Veneris Romoe condidit, as Agrippa reporteth?

{a} Espincaeus, De Contin., lib. iii. cap. 4.

Ver. 18. Nor the price of a dog.] Plutarch tells us that it was not permitted to a dog to enter into the chief tower or temple at Athens, for his heat in venery and ill savour. {a} The Hebrews understand this text literally, according to #Isa 66:3. Others metaphorically, as #Re 22:15, either of impudent cynics, such as Antisthenes, that shame not to commit uncleanness in the sight of others; these are worse than Absalom. {#2Sa 16:22} Or else of Sodomites, buggerers, Meritorii, as they call them, men that have put off all manhood, and are become dogs, worse than dogs. "Am I a dog’s head?" said Abner to Ishbosheth {#2Sa 3:8} -that is, shamelessly lecherous.

{a} δια του ακολαστου και δυσωδους.—Plut. Ελληνικ.

Ver. 19. Thou shalt not lend upon usury.] Heb., Upon biting usury. It must needs bite at length that licks so clean. Amalek, the licking people, I mean the nation of usurers and their factors, as cormorants, fall upon the poor borrower, and with open mouth devour him.

“Εστι τοκος προ τοκοιο, τοκος γε μεν εστι και αλλος.”

Faenus a multiplici foetu, ut τοκος α τοκτω. In the year 1235, there were spread through England certain Roman usurers, called Caursini, quasi capientes Ursi; { a} devouring bears, saith Matthew Paris. These bite to purpose. Others are more cunning and close in their conveyance; like serpents, they can sting without hissing; like dog fish, suck your blood only with licking, and in the end kill you, and cut your throats without biting. "For as much as all usury, being forbidden by the law of God, is a sin, and detestable," &c., saith the statute, 13 Eliz., cap. 8. And "Verily so many as increase themselves by usury, &c., they have their goods of the devil’s gift" (Homil. of the Church of England, vol. ii. hom. 17, p. 2). Aristotle, {b} by the dim light of nature, saw the evil of it, condemning in one page the usurer and the dicer. And Agis, General of the Athenians, so hated usury, that he made a bonfire of all the usurer’s bills and bonds in the market place, and then said that he never saw a finer fire than that in all his life. {c}

{a} Speed.

{b} Arist., Eth., lib. iv. cap. 1.

{c} Plut., in Solone.

Ver. 20. Unto a stranger thou mayest.] And they do it to purpose at this day in foreign parts where they live, straining up their usury to eighteen in the hundred upon the Christian. This is their chief trade, and this is yielded by some as a reason why the Jews do so stink, Quod plerique omnes mensarii sint, faeneratoriam exercentes, et ita nullis exercitati laboribus, i.e., Because most of them are usurers, lead sedentary lives, and use no bodily exercise. It was the saying of a merry fellow, that in Christendom there were neither scholars enough, gentlemen enough, nor Jews enough. If the first, so many would not be pluralists; if the second, so many peasants would not be reckoned among the gentry; if the third, not so many usurers. {a}

{a} Heyl, Geog.

Ver. 21. Thou shalt not slack to pray.] Come off with it round and readily, as those {#Zec 5:9} that had "wings," and "wind in their wings," Habent aulae suum cito, cito God loves a cheerful giver.

Ver. 22. It shall be no sin in thee, ] i.e., No such great sin; as #Joh 9:41, so #Joh 15:22,24 Jas 4:17. See #Ec 5:5. Vovere nusquam est praeceptum, saith Bellarmine: We are nowhere in Scripture commanded to vow. And Fateor quod Deus non praecipit, sed tantum consulit nobis ut aliquid illi voveamus, saith another Popish writer. {a} I confess God nowhere commandeth, but only counselleth us to make vows. But what will they say to #Ps 76:11; -"Vow and perform to the Lord your God, bring presents" &c.? And are not the nine lepers condemned by Christ for their negligence and unthankfulness? {#Lu 17:17,18}

{a} Alphons. de Castro., De Monach, lib. ii. cap. 16.

Ver. 24. When thou comest, &c.] As a passenger; {#Mt 12:1,2} how much more as a labourer; {#1Co 9:7} thou mayest take what thou wilt for necessity, but not for superfluity.

Ver. 25. But thou shalt not move a sickle.] Here God reserveth the right and property of the owner, which no man might invade or infringe.

Chapter 24

Ver. 1. Because he hath found some uncleanness.] He is displeased with some defect which he hath found either in her body or behaviour: as our Henry VIII pretended at least to do in his Anne of Cleve, sister to William, duke of Cleve, whose other sister Frederick, duke of Saxony, Luther’s patron and protector, had espoused. This lady being sent into England, against Frederick’s liking, and married to King Henry, seemed nothing pleasing in his eye, and was therefore ( sed quo iure?) soon after divorced. This Stephen Gardiner thought a fit subject for him to work upon against the Lord Cromwell, who had made the match, and now opposed the divorce, and was therefore put to death, which he suffered right Christianly and cheerfully. {a}

Let him write her a bill of divorcement.] Heb., He shall write her a bill of divorcement. God permitteth, he commandeth not the Jews thus to do, as they mistook the matter, {#Mt 19:7} and were better informed by our Saviour. {#Mt 19:8} {See Trapp on "Mt 19:8"}

{a} Speed’s Hist, fol. 1042.

Ver. 3. And if the latter husband hate her.] As many Nabals now-a-days do. Job was not more weary of his boils, than they are of their bedfellows, cursing their weddingday as much as he did his birthday, and thirsting after a divorce as he did after death: which, because it cannot be had, their lives prove like the sojourning of Israel in Marah, where almost nothing could be heard but mourning, conjuring, and complaining.

Ver. 4. After that she is defiled.] Or, Caused to he defiled, to wit, by her husband, who put her away first, he being her only lawful husband. {#Mt 5:32}

Ver. 5. Shall cheer up his wife.] For the better knitting of their affections; which, if well done at first, will continue the more firm ever after; as a broken bone well set, or as two boards well glued together, will sooner break in a new place than there.

Ver. 6. A man’s life.] That is, his livelihood. A poor man in his house is like a snail in his shell, crush that and you kill him. See #Lu 8:43 Mr 12:44. All her life, ολον του βιον, that is, all her living.

Ver. 7. And maketh merchandise of him.] What then shall be done to those seducers, that "creeping," or shooting themselves into houses, "lead captive silly women," {#2Ti 3:6} and simple men, {#Ro 16:18} take them prisoners, and then make price of them? {#2Pe 2:3} Of which sort of soul merchants, there are now-a-days found not a few. See #Re 18:13.

Ver. 8. The Levites shall teach you.] Not the history only, but the mystery too. {See Trapp on "Le 13:2"} &c.

Ver. 9. Did unto Miriam.] When he spat in her face, and spared her not, though a prophetess, and a conductress of God’s people to Canaan. {#Mic 6:4} God will not pass by the sins of his saints, if scandalous especially, without a sensible check.

Ver. 10. To fetch his pledge.] To see, Quam sit eurta supellex, and to pick and choose what pledge thou pleasest.

Ver. 12. Thou shalt not sleep with his pledge.] As those cruel crafties did, {#Am 2:8} that "sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes." {#Am 2:6}

Ver. 13. May bless thee.] Saying, as St Paul brings in the relieved poor Christian, {#2Co 9:15} "Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift." God will surely bless thee for such a blessing.

And it shall be righteousness unto thee.] God will reckon it for a good work, and graciously reward it, he will turn paymaster to thee; thy righteousness, and thy riches too, shall endure for ever. {#Ps 112:3}

Chapter 25

Ver. 1. If there be a controversy.] Among the Mohammedans there are very few law suits, and the reason is given, Quod temere litigantes publice flagellis caeduntur, because they that sue others without just cause are whipped publicly. Once it was counted ominous to commence actions and follow suits. Of our common barristers we may well say, as the historian doth of mathematicians, Genus hominum quod in rep. nostra et vetabitur semper et retinebitur. {a}

{a} Caesar. Com. Tac., lib. i. cap. 7.

Ver. 2. To be beaten before his face.] The Turks, when cruelly lashed, are compelled to return to the judge that commanded it, to kiss his hand, to give him thanks, and to pay the officer that whipped them.

Ver. 3. Should seem vile unto thee.] There is an honour due to all men, {#1Pe 2:17} and though we must hate the sin, yet not the sinner.

Ver. 4. That treadeth out the corn.] Which was the manner of that country: whereunto also the prophet alludeth, {#Ho 10:11} "Ephraim is a heifer, that loveth to tread out the corn" (because while it treads, it feeds on the corn), but not to plough, because no refreshing till the work was done.

Ver. 5. Her husband’s brother.] This was a special exception from that general law, {#Le 18:16} but yet gave no liberty under this pretext, to have more wives than one at once. {See Trapp on "Mt 22:23"}

Ver. 6. The first born.] Provided that he be a son; as appears by the reason here given, that his name be not put out of Israel. It signified the birthright of Christ that should never die. "He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days." {#Isa 53:10} Filiabitur nomen eius {#Ps 72:17} The name of Christ shall endure for ever; it shall be begotten as one generation is begotten of another; there shall be a succession of Christ’s name.

Ver. 9. And loose his shoe.] To show that he was worthy to go barefoot, and had no right howsoever to tread upon that ground, as any part of his estate. See #Ru 4:7. The Turks have a ceremony somewhat like this; {a} the woman may sue a divorce, when her husband would abuse her against nature: which she doth by taking off his or her shoe before the judge, and holding it the sole upward, but speaking nothing, for the uncleanness of the fact.

And spit in his face.] As unworthy to show his face amongst his brethren. See #Nu 12:14 Isa 50:6.

That will not build up his brother’s house.] {See Trapp on "Ex 1:21"}

{a} Blunt’s Voyage.

Ver. 12. Cut off her hand.] The instrument of her sin. Thus Cranmer thrust his hand, wherewith he had subscribed a recantation, first into the fire, crying out, "Thou unworthy right hand." An Act of Parliament was here made, in the reign of Philip and Mary, that the authors and sowers of seditious writings should lose their right hands. By virtue whereof John Stubbs and William Page had their right hands cut off, with a cleaver driven through the wrist with the force of a beetle, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, for a book written against the marriage with the Duke of Anjou, entitled, "The Gulf wherein England will be Swallowed up by the French Marriage," &c., which most men presaged would, if it had gone on, have been the ruin of religion. {a}

{a} Camden’s Elisab., fol. 239.

Ver. 13. Divers weights, a great and a small.] As they have that weigh not out a whole seventh day to God, who hath given men six whole days to labour in; these sell by one measure and buy by another. It was an error, doubtless, for want of due light and better information, in that pious prince, Edward VI, to give order to his council, that upon Sundays they should attend public affairs of the realm, despatch answers to letters, and make full despatches of all things concluded in the week before; provided that they be present at common prayer. {a}

{a} Life of Edw. VI, by Sir J. Heywood, p. 147.

Ver. 18. How he met thee by the way.] Not with bread and water, but with fire and sword. See #Ex 17:8.

And he feared not God.] Who had so powerfully brought his Israel out of Egypt. See #Job 6:14 Ge 20:11. {See Trapp on "Job 6:14"} {See Trapp on "Ge 20:11"}

Ver. 19. Thou shalt not forget it.] Neither did they. Saul should have utterly destroyed them, {#1Sa 15:18,19} but wherein he failed, God stirred up the Simeonites in Hezekiah’s days to smite the rest of the Amalekites that were escaped. {#1Ch 4:42,43} It is ill angering the Ancient of days. His wrath lasts longer than hot coals of juniper, {#Ps 120:4} his judgments are severe and durable: as we use to say of winter frosts, they never rot in the sky, but shall fall, if late, yet surely, yet seasonably. God’s forbearance is no quittance.

Chapter 26

Ver. 2. Thou shalt take of the first, &c.] In token of homage, or as a chief rent due to God the true proprietary, of whom they held all.

Ver. 5. A Syrian ready to perish.] Jacob, whose original was from Haran in Syria, {#Ge 11:31} and whose abode had been with Laban the Syrian, in much poverty, affliction, and misery. {#Ho 12:12} How low and mean were we of this nation at first! Brith signifies blue-coloured, sc., with woad: hence we were called Britons. Instead of fine clothes our ancestors dyed their skins, and painted upon them sundry sorts of birds and beasts: for food they had barks of trees, &c. This should never be forgotten.

And became there a nation.] Consider we likewise what we were by nature, and should have been; what we are by grace, and shall be; and then take we up that most modest speech of that noble Athenian captain, Iphicrates, in the midst of all his glory, εξ οιων εις οια; {a} from how great baseness and misery, to what great blessedness and glory are we advanced; being "raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" {#Eph 2:9,11-13} {See Trapp on "Eph 2:11"} {See Trapp on "Eph 2:12"} {See Trapp on "Eph 2:13"} What was there in us, said Tamerlane to Bajazet the great Turk, now his prisoner, that God should set us over two great empires of Turks and Tartars, to command many more worthy than ourselves, you being blind of one eye, and I lame of a leg, &c.? {b} Peter Martyr told Queen Elizabeth in an epistle, that princes must be doubly thankful to God: (1.) As men; (2.) As eminent men, exalted above others. So must all God’s servants, who being his firstborn, are in that respect "higher than the kings of the earth," {#Ps 89:27} and being "the firstfruits of his revenue," are therefore "holiness to the Lord." {#Jer 2:3}

{a} Arist., Rhetor., lib, v. cap. 9.

{b} Leonclav., Annal. Turc.

Ver. 12. The stranger, the fatherless.] Thus God doth not only plead the poor man’s cause; {#De 15:10,11} but he allots a portion of the third year’s tithe, not only to the Levite, who is never excluded, but to the stranger, fatherless, and widow, as Jerome observeth and calleth it πτωκοδεκαδη, the poor man’s tithe.

Ver. 13. I have not transgressed.] This is spoken, not by way of Pharisaical boasting or opinion of merit, but public testification of entire obedience.

Ver. 14. I have not eaten thereof in my mourn, ing.] All God’s worships were to be celebrated with joy. {#De 12:7} Sacrifices offered with mourning were abominated, {#Ho 9:4} yea, accursed. {#De 28:47} None might come to the court of Persia in mourning weeds. {#Es 4:2}

For any unclean use.] Or, Common profane use. Common and unclean is one and the same in sundry languages; to teach us, that it is hard to deal in common businesses, and not defile ourselves, and that those that come to holy things with common affections and carriages profane them.

Nor given ought thereof for the dead.] To bury them, or buy provision for the funeral feast. {#Jer 16:7 Eze 24:7 Ho 9:4}

Ye have done according, &c.] It is a witty expression of Luther; By men’s boasting of what they have done, says he, Haec ego feci, haec ego feci, they become nothing else but faeces, dregs. But so did not these. {See Trapp on "De 26:13"}

Ver. 17. Thou hast avouched.] This we do, when with highest estimation, most vigorous affections, and utmost endeavours we bestow ourselves upon God, giving up our names and hearts to the profession of truth. And this our choosing God for our God, {#Ps 73:25} is a sign he first chose us. {#1Jo 4:19} Mary answers not "Rabboni," till Christ hath said "Mary" to her. It is he that brings us into the bonds of the covenant. {#Eze 20:37} He first cries out, Who is on my side? who? and then gives us to answer, {as #Isa 44:5} "One says, I am the Lord’s; another calls himself by the name of Jacob; another subscribes," &c.

Ver. 19. And to make thee high.] "Assyria is the work of God’s hand," but "Israel is his inheritance." {#Isa 19:25 43:3}

Chapter 27

Ver. 2. And plaster them with plaster.] That they might have it in white and black.

Ver. 4. In mount Ebal.] Where the curse was denounced, {#De 27:13} to signify, that those that sought salvation in the law, must needs be left under the curse. The law is a yoke of bondage, as Jerome calls it; and they who look for righteousness from thence are like oxen, who toil and draw, and when they have done their labour, are fatted for slaughter.

Ver. 5. Thou shalt build an altar.] For burnt offerings, &c. {#De 27:6,7} God teacheth them thereby, that righteousness, impossible to the law, was to be sought in Christ, figured by that altar and those sacrifices. Thus the moral law drove the Jews to the ceremonial, which was their gospel, as it doth now drive us to Christ, who is indeed "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." {#Ro 10:4}

Ver. 8. All the words of this law very plainly.] Therefore it could not be all Deuteronomy, much less all Moses’s books, as some have thought; for what stones could suffice for such a work? Unless they could write as close, -but how then could it be very plainly?—as he did who set forth the whole history of our Saviour’s passion very lively, both things, and acts, and persons, on the nails of his own hands, as Maeiolus reporteth. {a}

{a} In Canicular. Colloq.

Ver. 15. Cursed be he, &c.] The blessings are not mentioned by Moses; that we might learn to look for them by the Messiah only. {#Ac 3:26}

Ver. 16. That setteth light.] That despises, undervalues, not only that curses, as #Ex 21:17.

Ver. 24. That smiteth.] Either with violent hand or virulent tongue. {#Jer 28:16,17}

Ver. 25. Cursed be he that taketh reward.] Among the Romans, by the law of the twelve tables, it was death without any deliverance. The psalmist doometh this sin with exclusion out of heaven. {#Ps 15:5} That king of this land that was called St Edmund, was wont oft to say, There is not much difference betwixt those two words, prendere and pendere, to take gifts and to hang, and that the latter was the desert of the former. A bribing judge wants but a hurdle, a horse, and a halter, to do him right; as Belknap once said in another case.

Ver. 26. Cursed.] Aut faciendum, aut patiendum. Men must either have the direction of the law, or the correction.

Chapter 28

Ver. 1. If thou shalt hearken diligently.] Heb., If hearkening thou shalt hearken; if when God speaks once, thou shalt hear it twice; as David did, {#Ps 62:11} by a blessed rebound of meditation and practice.

Will set thee on high.] "Thou shalt ride upon the high places of the earth." {#Isa 58:14} There thou shalt have thy commoration, but in heaven thy conversation {a} {#Php 3:20} being a high and holy people, {#De 26:19} high in worth, and humble in heart, as one saith of Athanasius.

{a} υψηλος τοις εργοις, ταπεινος δε τω φρονηματι—Nazian

Ver. 2. And overtake thee.] Unexpectedly befall thee. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow thee," {#Ps 23:6} as the evening sunbeams follow the passenger, as the rock water followed the Israelites in the wilderness, and overtook them at their stations. {#1Co 10:4} "O continue," or draw out to the length, "thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee." {#Ps 36:10} There will be a continued series, a connection between them, to all such.

Ver. 3. Blessed shalt thou be.] What blessedness is, {See Trapp on "Mt 5:3"}

Ver. 4. The fruit of thy body.] Which is thy chief possession; but without my blessing will be bitter sweets, {a} "Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of such as are the arrows of a strong man," {#Ps 128:3,4} the knottiness of whose nature is refined and reformed, and made smooth by grace. Arrows be not arrows by growth, but by art: what can better preserve Jacob from confusion, or his face from waxing pale, than when he shall see his children, the work of God’s hands, framed and fitted by the word in regeneration, and the duties of new obedience? This will make him to sanctify God, even to sanctify the Holy One, and with singular encouragement from the God of Israel. {#Isa 29:22,23}

{a} Dulcis acerbitas, amarissima voluptas. -Tertul.

Ver. 5. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.] Or, Thy dough trough. The Greek hath it, Thy barns and thy remainders. The meaning is, Thou shalt know no want. Cicero {a} saith, One friend should wish to another three things only, to enjoy health, to possess honour, and not suffer necessity. He that observeth God’s commands to do them, as #De 28:1, shall have all these and more.

{a} Ad Attic.

Ver. 6. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in.] "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow thee all the days of thy life"; {#Ps 23:6} thou shalt have a confluence of all, both inward and outward, comforts and contentments.

Ver. 7. The Lord shall cause thine enemies.] Mr Fox observes, {a} that in King Edward VI’s time, the English put to flight their enemies in Musselburgh field, the selfsame day and hour wherein the reformation enjoined by parliament was put in execution at London, by burning of idolatrous images. Such a dependence hath our success upon our obedience.

And flee before thee seven ways.] In the forementioned fight many so strained themselves in their race that they fell down breathless and dead, whereby they seemed in running from their deaths to run to it: two thousand, lying all day as dead, got away in the night. The Irish were so galled or scared with the English ordinance, that they had neither good hearts to go forward, nor good liking to stand still, nor good assurance to run away, saith the historian. {b}

{a} Act. and Mon.

{b} Life of Ed. VI., by Sir J. Heywood.

Ver. 8. The Lord shall command the blessing.] Now if he send his Mandamus, who shall withstand it?

Ver. 9. The Lord shall establish thee a holy people unto himself.] This is more and better than all the former: he shall "bless thee with all spiritual blessings, in heavenly things, in Christ Jesus." {#Eph 1:3} He is rich, not that hath the world, but that can contemn it.

Ver. 10. And they shall be afraid of thee.] Natural conscience cannot but do homage to the image of God stamped upon the natures and works of the godly. When they see in them that which is above the ordinary nature of men, or their expectation, they are afraid of the name of God, whereby they are called; their very hearts ache and quake within them; as is to be seen in Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Herod, Dioclesian, who was so amazed at the singular piety and invincible patience of the primitive Christians, that he laid down the empire in a humour, Quod Christi nomen se deleturum, uti cupiverat, desperasset, { a} because that when he sought to root out religion, he saw he could do no good on it.

{a} Bucholcer.

Ver. 12. And thou shalt lend.] This was our condition in the happy days of that incomparable Elizabeth, not to be passed over slightly without one sigh breathed forth, now after forty years, in her sacred memory. What a deal both of men and moneys did she lend the French, the Hollanders, &c.

Ver. 13. And the Lord shall make thee.] See a parallel place. {#Ho 13:1} "When Ephraim spake, there was trembling; he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died." Before, none durst budge against the name of Ephraim; but after he offended in Baal, every paltry adversary trampled upon him as a dead man.

Ver. 14. And thou shalt not go aside.] But keep my commandments curiously, even "as the apple of thine eye," {#Pr 7:2} with all chariness and circumspection, since the least deviation is dangerous, yea, destructive.

Ver. 15. All these curses shall come.] Far more curses are mentioned than blessings. Such is the baseness of our natures, that we are sooner terrified with menaces than moved with mercies. See we may here how the curse of God haunts the wicked, as it were a fury, in all his ways. In the city it attends him, in the country it hovers over him; coming in it accompanies him, going forth it follows him, and in travel it is his comrade: if it distaste not his dough, or empty his basket, yet will it fill his store with strife, or mingle the wrath of God with his sweetest morsels. It is a moth in his wardrobe, murrain among his cattle, mildew in his field, rot among his sheep, and ofttimes makes the fruit of his loins his greatest heartbreak, so that he is ready to wish with Augustus, Utinam aut caelebs vivissem, aut orbus periissem; Oh that I had either never married, or died childless!

Ver. 16. {See Trapp on "De 28:15"}

Ver. 17. {See Trapp on "De 28:15"}

Ver. 18. {See Trapp on "De 28:15"}

Ver. 19. {See Trapp on "De 28:15"}

Ver. 20. {See Trapp on "De 28:15"}

Ver. 21. The Lord shall make the pestilence.] Which Hippocrates calls Το θειον, as the falling sickness is called Morbus sacer, as more immediately sent of God.

Ver. 22. The Lord shall smite thee, &c.] {See Trapp on "Le 26:16"}

Ver. 23. See on #Le 26:19.

Ver. 24. Powder and dust.] Which the wind and other things raise in times of drought.

Ver. 25. The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten.] David well understood the heaviness of this stroke, and therefore chose rather to fall into God’s hands another way, {#2Sa 24:14} since "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruelties":—

“ Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem.”

Ver. 26. And thy carcass shall be meat.] Thou shalt want the honour of honest burial; which the Jews accounted worse than death, {#Ec 6:3} and the Gentiles extreme misery.

Ver. 27. With the botch of Egypt, ] i.e., With the leprosy called Elephantiasis, when the skin grows hard as the elephant’s skin. This, saith one, was bred only about Nile, the river of Egypt.

Ver. 28. With madness and blindness.] Spiritual, especially; such as befell the Jews of old, {#Ro 11:18 2Co 3:14} the chief priests and scribes especially, who, being questioned by Herod about the King of the Jews, {#Mt 2:4,5} could answer directly out of the Scriptures, and give such signs of the Messiah as did evidently agree to Jesus Christ. And yet because they discerned not their day of grace, but winked hard with their eyes, and shut the windows, lest the light should come in, they were by a special judgment so besotted and infatuated, that when God shows them the man, to whom their own signs agree, they cannot allow of him, nor will yield to be saved by him upon any terms. How shamefully they were deluded by Barchocab, is notoriously known. And after this, when they saw Mohammed arising in such power, they were straight ready to cry him up for their Messiah. But when they saw him eat of a camel, they were as blank as when they saw the hoped issue of their late Jewish virgin turned to a daughter. They are generally light, aerial, and fanatical brains, apt to work themselves into the fool’s paradise of a sublime dotage. Howbeit God, we trust, will at length cure them of this spiritual ophthalmy {disordered mental vision} and frenzy. Their dispersion for this one thousand six hundred years is such, as that one of their own Rabbins concludes from thence that their Messiah must needs be come, and they must needs suffer so much for killing him. "Oh that the salvation of Israel were once come out of Zion! When the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, then shall Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad." {#Ps 14:7}

Ver. 29. And thou shalt be only oppressed.] As the Thebans, ever till then victorious, were, after the death of Epaminondas, famous only for their overthrows: as Rome, since Antichristian, was never besieged by an enemy, but it was taken and plundered: as the Jews since Christ’s death never attempted anything but miscarried. An evil, an only evil, &c. {#Eze 7:5}

Ver. 30. Thou shalt built a house, &c.] A great aggravation of a man’s misery it is, to fall from high hopes, to fail of large expectations, as Haman did, and Absalom, and Alexander the Great, and Tamerlane, who preparing to perfect his conquest of the Greek Empire, and having given a good beginning thereunto, in the midst of his high hopes and greatest power, died of an ague, Jan. 27, 1462. {a} Many men spend their strength and waste their wits in getting these outward things, and in learning how to put them to their delightfullest use: and then, when to possess them might seem a happiness, either they die or are otherwise deprived of all the sweet they have laboured for.

{a} Turk. Hist.

Ver. 31. Thine ox shall be slain, &c.] Thou shalt be plundered of all, that is, deplumed, thy feathers plucked from thee to the very bare skin; -as plundering signifies in Dutch; and from the Dutch wars we first had the word plunder.

Ver. 32. And thine eyes shall look.] A sad sight to see our children butchered before our eyes, as Mauricius the Emperor did; or otherwise misused by a merciless enemy. Doves sometimes sit in their dove-cotes and see their nests destroyed, their young ones taken away and killed before their eyes, neither do they ever offer to rescue or revenge, as all other creatures either do or desire to do.

And fail with looking.] As Sisera’s mother’s did. {#Jud 5:28}

Ver. 33. The fruit of thy land, &c.] So #Eze 25:4. They shall eat thy fruit, and they shall drink thy milk. See #Jer 5:17,1:7.

Ver. 34. So that thou shalt be mad, &c.] As Bajazet was in his iron cage; as Pope Boniface VIII was the time when shut up in St. Angelo by Sara Columnus, his mortal enemy, renting himself with his teeth, and devouring his own fingers. {a} Philip, the Spanish king, is said to have borne patiently the defeat given to his invincible armada in the year 1588, but ten years after he died of a very loathsome and incurable disease, a sore botch that seized upon him from the sole of his foot unto the top of his head; as is to be seen set down by Carol. Scribanius, "Instit. Princip.," cap. 20. {b}

{a} Turk. Hist., 116.

{b} Camd., Elis.

Ver 35. {See Trapp on "De 28:34"}

Ver. 36. Thee and thy king.] As he did Joachim, Manasseh, Zedekiah, &c. Our Edward III had the king of Scots and the French king both prisoners together here in England.

Ver. 37. And thou shalt become.] See on #Ps 44:14.

Ver. 38. For the locust shall consume it.] See this fulfilled in #Joe 1:4 Am 4:9 7:1,2 Hag 1:6,11.

Ver. 41. Thou shalt not enjoy them.] Heb., They shall not be thine; thou shalt be least master of them.

Ver. 42. The locusts.] All sorts of vermin.

Ver. 43. The stranger.] The Lurdaines, as once here the Lord Danes.

Ver. 45. Pursue thee and overtake thee.] Though thou shuffle, as Balaam’s ass once did before the angel, from side to side, and strive to shift them; though thou wriggle and writhe, after the manner of wrestlers, to avoid the foil; I will wry with thee, as in #Ps 18:26, and my hand shall meet thee at every turn.

Ver. 46. For a sign.] Of God’s heavy displeasure.

Ver. 47. For the abundance all things.] Aristotle was wont to tax his Athenians, Quod cum duas res invenissent, frumenta ac leges, frumentis ut erentur, legibus nequaquam; imo moribus suis quam legibus uti mallent, as Valerius Maximus addeth, {a} Sure it is, that as these Jews of old, so we to this day are much to be blamed, for that we live in God’s good land, but not by God’s good laws.

{a} Laert., lib. v. cap. 1.

Ver. 48. In want of all things.] The want whereof shall teach thee the worth of them. Blessings are fairest on the back side. {a}

{a} Bona a tergo formosissima.

Ver. 49. As the eagle fleeth.] Swiftly, strongly, greedily, the Vulturine eagle especially.

Ver. 50. A nation of fierce countenance.] Heb., Strong of face, i.e., bold, fierce, cruel, impudent; as was Antiochus Epiphanes. {#Da 8:23} See there.

Ver. 51. Fruit of thy cattle.] See on #De 28:31.

Ver. 52. In all thy gates.] See this fulfilled in #2Ki 17:5 25:1,2.

Ver. 53. And thou shalt eat.] {See Trapp on "Le 26:29"}

Ver. 54. His eye shall be evil, ] i.e., Envious and grutchful.

Ver. 56. The tender and delicate.] These threatenings were tanquam in speculo conspicuae, literally and punctually fulfilled upon the Jews at the last destruction of Jerusalem, at which time wrath came upon them to the utmost. {#2Th 2:6-13}

Ver. 57. And toward her young one.] Heb., Her after birth, which she shall devour, and the child together with it.

Ver. 58. This glorious and fearful name.] That Nomen maiestativum, as Bernard calleth it. The wiser sort of heathens acknowledged, Augustius esse de Deo sentiendum, quam ut nomen et imaginem eius passim ac temere usurpemus, that higher thoughts must be taken of God, than lightly and profanely to make use of his name, which no man may presume in a sudden unmannerliness to blurt out. {a} When they would swear by their Jupiter, they would break off their oath with a Μα τον, as those that only durst to owe the rest to their thoughts. The Greeks and Romans both worshipped the same Jupiter, but the Romans are therefore better thought of, because they ever thought and spake more reverently of him than the Greeks; as may be seen in Homer and Virgil. The Egyptians so honoured their Mercurius Trismegistus, that they held it not lawful to pronounce his name commonly and rashly. Tat, the son of this Trismegist, flourished in Egypt about the time that Moses wrote his Deuteronomy, as saith Eusebius.

{a} Hinc Pythagoricum illud, εν δακτυλιω Θεον εικονα μη περιφερεια—Suidas.

Ver. 59. And of long continuance.] So that thy living shall be no better than to lie a-dying.

Ver. 60. All the diseases of Egypt.] Which what they were, see #Ex 8:2,16,21 9:3,9,15,18 10:4 21 11:5

Ver. 61. Which is not written.] God hath treasuries of plagues, such as were never yet read of. Few years but bring forth new diseases, such as puzzle the best physicians.

Ver. 62. And ye shall be left few in number.] And so "shall know my breach of covenant," because ye broke first.

Ver. 63. So the Lord will rejoice over you.] See here the venomous nature of sin, so far forth offensive to Almighty God, as to cause him, who otherwise afflicts not willingly, {#La 3:33} but delights in mercy, {#Mic 7:18} to rejoice in the ruin of his creatures, as here, to laugh at their destruction, and mock when their fear cometh, {#Pr 1:26} to take as much pleasure therein as a man would do in a cup of generous wine, {#Re 16:19} and to be as much eased thereby, as one over-gorged would be in ridding his stomach of that which oppressed it. {#Re 3:16}

Ver. 64. And the Lord shall scatter thee.] The Jews are to this day a miserable, dejected, and dispersed people, abhorred of God and men, and exiled out of the world, as it were, by a common consent of nations.

Ver. 65. A trembling heart.] Juvenal by a jeer calls them Iudaeos trementes, trembling Jews (Sat. vi.). It seems they had Cain’s curse upon them.

Ver. 66. And thy life shall hang in doubt.] Semper et indesinenter desperabis de vita; thou shalt live in continual expectation of death: as Tiberius caused such to do as he most hated, for a singular punishment.

Ver. 67. Would God it were even.] A graphical description of misery. Compare #Job 7:3,4.

Ver. 68. And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt.] This is the last and greatest curse here threatened. Oh pray, pray, said that Dutch divine upon his deathbed, Pontifex enim Romanus, et Concilium Tridentinum mira moliuntur, for the Pope and his council are seeking to bring us all back into spiritual Egypt.

“ Ah ne diem illum posteri

Vivant meiquo pristinum

Vertantur in lutum aurea

Quae non bearunt saecula!”

What long hath been the opinion and fear of some, not unconsiderable divines, that Antichrist, before his abolition, shall once again overflow the whole face of the west, and suppress the whole Protestant churches, I pray God to avert. {a}

{a} Mr Baylie’s Anabaptis. Unsealed, &c., pref.

Chapter 29

Ver. 1. Beside the covenant.] Which yet was also a covenant of grace, and the same with this in substance; only that at Horeb was made and delivered in a more legal manner, this in a more evangelical, as appears in the following chapter.

Ver. 2. Moses called.] At several times it is like, these things were delivered, and not at once.

Ver. 3. The signs and those great miracles.] None of all which wrought kindly upon them to effectual conversion, because God denied concourse and influence of his grace. Jeroboam had as great a miracle wrought before him in the drying up of his hand as St Paul at his conversion, yet was he not wrought upon, because the Spirit did not set it on.

Ver. 4. Yet the Lord hath not given you.] Nor is he bound to do, "but on whom he will he showeth mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth," i.e., he softeneth not. Till when, a man stands in the midst of means, as a stake in the midst of streams, unmoveable: yea, the more God forbids a sin, the more he bids for it. {#Ro 7:8} {See Trapp on "Mt 13:11"} {See Trapp on "Mt 13:13"} {See Trapp on "Mt 13:14"}

Ver. 5. Your clothes.] {See Trapp on "De 8:4"}

Ver. 6. Ye have not eaten bread, ] viz., Ordinary, {see #De 2:6} but manna; et benefieium postulat officium.

Ver. 9. That ye may prosper.] Piety is the right and ready way to prosperity. Sulla, surnamed Felix, accounted it not the least part of his happiness that Metellus, surnamed Pius, was his friend. Godliness is the best friend to happiness.

Ver. 10. Before the Lord.] Who seeth your inside also, and is intimo vestro vobis intimior.

Ver. 11. From the hewer of thy wood.] The meanest amongst you, such as afterwards were the Gibeonites, who also by faith became covenanters, and are called Nethinims in Ezra and Nehemiah. They were made drawers of water to the temple, as a kind of punishment: God made it a mercy; for the nearer they were to the Church, the nearer they came to God.

Ver. 16. How we have dwelt.] And how hard is it to pass through Ethiopia, how much more to dwell there, and not to be discoloured! Sin is catching, and by the senses, those five ports of the soul, that old serpent oft winds himself into the heart. Ye have seen their abominations; oh that you would say, Satis est vidisse, &c. Now therefore, lest there should be, &c., #De 29:18.

Ver. 17. A root that beareth gall] An evil heart of unbelief, {#Heb 3:12} a deceitful and deceived heart, {#Jer 17:9 Isa 44:20} that is ever either weaving spiders’ webs—i.e., loving vanity, seeking after leasing {#Ps 4:2}—or hatching cockatrice’ eggs, that is, acting mischief. {#Isa 59:5} As in that first chaos were the seeds of all creatures; so in man’s heart, here therefore fitly called, a root of rottenness, of all sins. {a} Holy Bradford would never look upon any one’s lewd life with one eye, but presently reflect upon himself with the other, and say, In this my vile heart remains that sin, which without God’s special grace I should have committed as well as he.

{a} πανσπερμια.

Ver. 19. When he heareth the words.] But feareth them no more than Behemoth doth the iron weapons, which are esteemed by him as straws. The presumptuous sinner, saith one, makes God a God of clouts, -one that, howsoever he speaks heavy words, will not do as he saith. Words are but wind, say they in Jeremiah. {#Jer 5:13} "God forbid," say they in the Gospel. {#Lu 20:16} These things are but spoken in terrorem, thinks the practical atheist; bugbear words, devised on purpose to frighten silly people, &c. Ahab, after he was threatened with utter rooting out, begat fifty sons, as it were to cross God, and to try it out with him. So Thrasonical Lamech brags, and goes on to outdare God himself; "If Cain be avenged," &c. {#Ge 4:24} The old Italians were wont, in time of thunder, to shoot off their greatest ordinance, and to ring their greatest bells, to drown the noise of the heavens: like unto these are many frontless and flagitious persons. "But shall they escape by iniquity? In thine anger"—it is not more a prayer than a prophecy—"cast down the people, O God." {#Ps 56:7}

To add drunkenness to thirst.] To "add rebellion to sin." {#Job 34:37} "To drink iniquity like water." {#Job 34:7} His sin and his repentance run in a circle, as drunkenness and thirst do. He sins and cries God mercy, and says he will sin no more, and yet does it again the next day, till his heart be so hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, that at length he loseth all passive power of "recovering himself out of the snare of the devil, by whom he is taken alive at his pleasure." {#2Ti 2:26}

Ver. 20. The Lord will not spare him.] God cannot satisfy himself in threatening this heinous sin, as if the very naming of it had enraged his jealousy. Yea, when he threateneth it, he useth here no qualifications, as he doth in other cases, but is absolute in threatening, to show that he will be resolute in punishing. See the like in #Isa 22:12-14 Eze 24:13. It is better, therefore, to have a sore than a seared conscience; as a burning fever is more hopeful than a lethargy.

Ver. 21. And the Lord shall separate him unto evil.] Shall single him out as an object of his wrath; as the huntsman severeth out from the rest a stag to hunt for that day.

Ver. 22. When they see the plagues.] A presumptuous offender is a traitor to the state; "and one sinner destroyeth much good." {#Ec 9:18}

Ver. 23. And beareth not any grass.] As they say no ground doth where the great Turk hath once set his foot; such waste he makes, and such desolation he leaves behind him.

Like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.] {See Trapp on "Ge 19:24"} {See Trapp on "Ge 19:25"}

Admah and Zeboim.] Which two cities, bordering on Sodom and Gomorrah, were the worse, and fared the worse, for their neighbourhood, as Hamath did for Damascus. {#Zec 9:2} God overthrew them, and repented not. {#Jer 20:16}

And that the whole land thereof is brimstone and salt.] In the fire that consumed Sodom there was, it seemeth, admixed salt, to make the land barren, and to pickle up the people; brimstone also to keep down with its weight the fire, which of itself was light, and tended upwards.

Ver. 26. And whom he had not given unto them.] Or, Who had not given to them any portion. For "Can the vanities of the Gentiles give rain? or can the heavens give showers?" {#Jer 14:22} As Saul said, "Can the son of Jesse give you vineyards and olive-yards?" &c. {#1Sa 22:7} So may God say to apostates, Can the world do for you as I can?

Ver. 27. All the curses.] This was accomplished, as is by Daniel acknowledged. {#Da 9:11, &c.}

Ver. 28. And cast them into another land.] Cast them with a violence, with a vengeance; -in the Hebrew the word cast hath an extraordinary large letter ל; -"sling them out as out of a sling." {#1Sa 25:29} {Hebrew Text Note}

Ver. 29. The secret things belong.] This is one of those sixteen places which in the Hebrew are marked with a special note of regard. Eorum quae scire nec datur, nec fas est, licita est ignorantia. Scientiae appetentia, insaniae species, saith Calvin, out of Augustine.

Chapter 30

Ver. 1. The blessing and the curse.] When thou hast made trial of both, and hath bought thy wit, as feeling by woeful experience what an evil and a bitter thing sin is, and how easily thou mightest have redeemed thine own sorrows by better obedience.

Ver. 2. And shalt return to the Lord.] By sin we run away from God; by repentance we return to him.

Ver. 3. That then the Lord thy God.] Conversio Iudaeorum magnifice hic promittitur, saith one. Here is a stately promise of the conversion of the Jews, concerning which, {See Trapp on "Ro 11:25"} &c.

Ver. 4. If any of thine be driven.] The Jews have been, for this sixteen hundred years and upwards, a dejected and despised people, hated and cast out by a common consent of all nations, for their unexpiable guilt in murdering the Messiah, which they now begin to be somewhat sensible of, and will be so more and more. {See Trapp on "De 28:28"}

Ver. 6. And the Lord thy God.] See #De 10:16.

Ver. 7. Will put all these curses upon thine enemies.] God will recompense "tribulation to them that have troubled you"; {#2Th 1:6} he will "spoil the spoilers"; {#Isa 33:1} "deliver the just out of trouble, and the wicked shall come in his stead." {#Pr 11:8 Isa 65:13,14} It seemeth to the Church’s enemies an incredible paradox, and a news by far more admirable than acceptable, that there should be such a transmutation of conditions on both sides to contraries; but so it will be, as sure as the coat is on their backs, or the heart in their bodies. See #La 4:21.

Ver. 8. And thou shalt return.] Come again to thyself, as the prodigal, who had been for some while beside himself.

Ver. 9. And in the fruit of thy land for good.] God will provide that thou shalt not be the worse for thine outward abundance; that fulness shall not breed forgetfulness. It is as hard to bear prosperity, as to drink much wine and not be giddy, or as to drink strong waters and not weaken the brain thereby. The parable of the sun and wind is well known. Some of those in Queen Mary’s days, who kept their garments close about them, wore them afterwards more loosely, when they came to prosperity and preferment. It is a marvellous great mercy to have outward comforts and contentments for good. Bonus Deus Constantinum Magnum tantis terrenis implevit muneribus, quanta optare nullus auderet, saith Augustine, {a} God of his goodness heaped all good things upon Constantine.

{a} De Civ. Dei, lib. v. cap. 25.

Ver. 11. For this commandment.] This word of faith, {#Ro 10:8} that teacheth the righteousness of faith, {#Ro 10:6} and speaketh on this wise, the doctrine of salvation by faith that works by love, this is clearly enough revealed in both Testaments, so that none can reasonably plead ignorance, and think to be excused by it.

Ver. 12. Who shall go up for us to heaven?] And yet to know heavenly things, is to ascend into heaven. {#Pr 30:4}

Ver. 13. Neither is it beyond the sea.] Beyond the sea it was to us, till blessed Luther’s books were brought hither, together with Tyndale’s translation and other good men’s writings. Some Papists jeer us, and say that turkeys, hops, and heresy came into this kingdom in one bottom. Howbeit, long before this the Lady Anne, wife to king Richard II, sister to Winceslaus king of Bohemia, by living here was made acquainted with the gospel; whence also many Bohemians coming hither conveyed Wickliffe’s books into Bohemia, whereby a good foundation was laid for the ensuing Reformation, A.D. 1417, by the help of another good queen there, called Sophia. The writings also of John Huss, brought thence, wrought much good in this kingdom, a hundred years before Luther’s time.

Ver. 14. Very nigh.] Nigher than the skin is to the flesh, or the flesh to the bones; it is within thy nature, and shall be in thy heart, λογος εμφυτος, an inbred or indwelling word. {#Jas 1:21}

That thou mayest do it, ] sc., By believing in Christ, {#Joh 6:24} and yielding the obedience of faith. {#Heb 8:10}

Ver. 15. See, I have set before thee.] Matters of great importance must be set on with greatest vehemency.

Ver. 16. To love the Lord.] God must be obeyed out of love, or all is lost.

Ver. 17. But if thine heart turn away.] This is that death and evil. {#De 30:15}

Ver. 18. I denounce unto you.] See on #De 30:15.

Ver. 19. Life and death, blessing and cursing.] Of God it may be more truly affirmed, than ever it was of Charles V, Emperor,

“ Una gerit bellum, monstrat manus altera pacem.”

Therefore choose life.] Which yet man, of himself, can as little do as a dead carcass can fiy aloft. It was therefore an unsound and unsavoury speech of him that said, Quod vivamus, Dei munus est; quod bene vivamus, nostrum: That we live, it is of God; but that we live well, it is of ourselves. See the contrary in #Isa 11:12 Ho 14:8 Joh 15:5.

Ver. 20. For he is thy life.] He in whom thou livest, as the fish doth in the water, the lamp in the oil, &c. He is the author of life natural, spiritual, and eternal to his obedient servants.

Chapter 31

Ver. 1. Went and spake, ] i.e., Went on to speak, setting things in order before his death.

Ver. 2. I am a hundred and twenty, &c.] And so might well bespeak them, as Augustus once did his army, and pacified them thereby when they were in a mutiny; Audite senem iuvenes, quem iuvenem senes audierunt. {a}

{a} Suetonius.

Ver. 3. And Joshua.] Called Jesus. {#Heb 4:8} A clear type of Jesus Christ. What Moses could not do because of the people’s unbelief—viz., to bring them to Canaan, Joshua did. So what Moses’s law could not do—viz., to bring us to heaven, because of the infirmity of our flesh, Christ by his gospel hath done for us. {#Ro 8:3}

Ver. 4. And the Lord shall do unto them.] Every former mercy is a pledge of a future.

Ver. 5. According to all the command, ] sc., To root them out utterly. {#De 20:16,17}

Ver. 6. He will not fall thee.] Five times in holy Scriptures is this precious promise repeated; and in #Heb 13:5, made common to all believers, with a very deep asseveration.

Ver. 7. For thou must go with this people.] As a worthy guide, to lead them to their rest temporal; so doth Christ all his to their rest eternal.

Ver. 8. He will not fail thee.] See on #De 31:6.

Ver. 9. Unto the priests.] God’s library-keepers, his depositaries.

Unto all the elders of Israel.] As to the keepers of both tables.

Ver. 11. Thou shalt read this law.] Which was nevertheless "read in their synagogues every Sabbath day." {#Ac 15:21} And by this reading, at the feast of Tabernacles, every seventh year, the original copy written by Moses, they might perceive that those copies that they had amongst them were right and authentic. It was ill ordered in our English Bibles of the new translation, that between the printers’ haste and correctors’ oversight, such foul errors have been lately committed, as Judas printed for Jesus in the great Bible. The Turkish Koran is written and to be read in Arabic, under pain of death not to mistake a letter, {a} which is as easily done in this tongue as in any.

{a} Lightfoot’s Miscellanies.

Ver. 13. That they may hear, and that they may learn.] Hearing and seeing are by the philosopher called the learned senses. Faith also comes by hearing, {#Ro 10:17} and the Spirit. {#Ga 3:2}

Ver. 14. In the tabernacle, ] i.e., Before the door of it; and this was before the Lord himself. {#De 31:11}

Ver. 17. And many evils and troubles.] As it befell Samson and Saul, when God was gone; πονος πονω πονον φερει, all miseries came trooping and treading one in the heels of another. So #Eze 9:10,11. God makes many moves, and as he goes out, some judgment comes in upon the land.

Ver. 18. Hide my face, ] i.e., Withdraw my favour, and therewith all good.

Ver. 19. Put it in their mouths.] That out of their own mouths I may judge them; things made up in metre are better remembered. Before the knowledge of letters and writing, among the ancients it was a custom to sing their laws, lest they might forget them; used in the days of Aristotle, by the Agathyrsi, a people near to the Scythians.

Ver. 20. Then they will turn to other gods.] A bee is quickly drowned if she gets into a pot of honey. "Prosperity slayeth the foolish."

Ver. 21. For I know their imagination.] As a man that knows what roots he hath in his garden; though there be not a flower appears, yet he can say, when the spring comes, this and this will come up, because he knows the garden, and knows what roots are there: so the Lord knows our thoughts afar off, because he knows the principles that are within, and knows what they will do when occasion serves; he is privy to that root that beareth gall and wormwood. {#De 29:18}

Ver. 22. And taught it the children.]

“ Metra parant animos, pristina cornmemorant.”

Ver. 23. I will be with thee.] This must needs put mettle into him; for "if God be with us, who can be against us?" {#Ro 8:31} {See Trapp on "Ro 8:31"}

Ver. 26. In the side of the ark.] That it might be heard and regarded as the very law of God, though penned by Moses. And indeed the Jews at this day show exceeding great respect to the law; no man may touch it but with the right hand, and without a kiss of reverence, nor carry it behind him, but lay it next to his heart in his travel; if it but fall to the ground, they institute a fast for it, &c. The very Turks have so high an esteem of Moses, that if they find any piece of his writings, be it but a torn paper, lying on the ground, they presently take it up and kiss it. {a}

That it may be therefor a witness.] Hence haply the ark was called "the ark of the testimony." The law might be called the Doomsday Book; such a book there is in our common law, so called, saith Matthew Paris, because it spares no man.

{a} Schicard. Weemse. Pareus, Prol. in Genes.

Ver. 29. To provoke him to anger.] Which is the greatest folly that can be; for are we stronger than he? Can we imagine to make our party good with him? Surely as Ulysses’s companions told him, when he would needs provoke Polydamus,

Σχετλιε, πιπτ εθελεις ερεθιζεμεν αγριον ανδρα;

May not we much more say so to them that will needs provoke the Lord, It is good for men to meddle with their equals, and not contend with him that is mightier than they?

Chapter 32

Ver. 1. Give ear, O ye heavens, ] q.d., Such is this people’s stupidity and obstinacy, that I may as soon gain audience of these inanimate creatures as of them. See #Isa 1:2 Jos 24:27 Jer 22:29. We may cry till we are hoarse; speak till we spit forth our lungs, and to no more purpose than Bede did, when he preached to a heap of stones. Holy Melancthon, being himself newly converted, thought it impossible for his hearers to withstand the evidence of the gospel. But after he had been a preacher a while, it is said he complained, that "old Adam was too hard for young Melancthon."

Ver. 2. My doctrine.] Heb., My taking or winning doctrine: according to that in #Pr 11:30. "He that winneth" (Heb., taketh) "souls"—as fowlers do birds—"is wise."

Shall drop as the rain.] Drop; not dash: and as the rain, not as the storm, or as the spout, as they call it at sea. Evangelizatum, non maledictum missus es, said Oecolampadins to Farellus, an excellent, but a too earnest preacher. And such a one, say some, was Mr Perkins in his younger time, able almost to make his hearers’ hearts fall down, and their hairs to stand upright. The word damn he would pronounce with such an emphasis, as left a doleful echo in his auditors’ ears a good while after. True it is, that preachers should take the same liberty to cry down sins that men take to commit them. Peccata tanta severitate arguebat, saith one of Chrysostom, acsi ipse etiam per iniuriam laesus esset: but yet moderation must be used, and instruction drop meal distilled, that it may soak and sink, and so soften the heart that all grace may abound, &c. Such sweet droppers were Mr Bradford, Mr Dod, Dr Sibbs,

Ου και απο γλωττης μελιτος γλυκιων ρεεν αυδη.

Ver. 3. Ascribe ye greatness, ] i.e., Tremble at his word, and take it to heart. See #1Th 2:13.

Ver. 4. He is the rock.] A firm and everlasting refuge, a "Rock of Ages." {#Isa 26:4} One age passeth away, and another, and a third, &c., but the rock remains. "The name of the Lord is a strong tower"; {#Pr 18:10} "munition of rocks"; {#Isa 33:16} rocks so deep, no pioneer can undermine them; so thick, no cannon can pierce them; so high, no ladder can scale them.

Ver. 5. Their spot is not the spot.] Saints also have their spots, but not ingrained; not leopards’ spots, that are not in the skin only, but the flesh and bones, in the sinews, and the most inner parts, and so cannot be cured by any art, or washed away with any water. It is of incogitancy that the saints fall; put them in mind, and they mend all: it is of passion, and passions last not long. They are preoccupated, taken at unawares, &c. {#Ga 6:1} They have ever God for their chief end, and will not forego him upon any terms: only they err in the way, as thinking they may fulfil such a lust, and God keep too; but there is no way of wickedness found in them. Though shaken, yet they are rooted as trees, and though they wag up and down, yet they remove not, -as a ship at anchor. Sin stings the wicked, as the fiery serpents did the Israelites: the sins of the saints are but like the viper on Paul’s hand, that hurt him not. Sin makes wicked men the object of God’s hatred, the saints of his pity: as we hate poison in a toad, but we pity it in a man; in the one it is their nature, in the other their disease.

Perverse and crooked.] They wriggle and writhe after the manner of wrestlers, that wave up and down, and wind the other way: so the Hebrew word signifieth.

Ver. 6. Do ye thus requite the Lord?] Good turns aggravate unkindnesses, and our guilt is increased by our obligations. Solomon’s idolatry was far worse than that of his wives; he had been better bred, and God had appeared to him twice. It is the ingratitude that makes the godly man’s sin so heinous, which otherwise would be far less than other men’s, since his temptations are stronger, and his resistance greater. Hebricians observe, that in Halaihovah there is in the text one ה greater than ordinary; to show that the wonder was the greater, that they should so evil requite such a Lord, Father, Redeemer, Maker, and Governor, by being so corrupt, perverse, crooked, foolish, and unwise; five opposed to five; ה being used for the number of five. {Hebrew Text Note}

Ver. 7. And they will tell thee.] And so they did. {#Jud 6:13 Ps 44:1,2}

Ver. 8. He set the bounds of the people.] Of the seventy nations reckoned, {#Ge 10} and the seventy souls of Israel. {#Ge 46:27 De 10:22} The Jews have a saying, that those seventy souls were as much as all the seventy nations of the world, as being the Lord’s portion, for whom he espied out the land of Canaan, which is "the glory of all lands." {#Eze 20:6}

Ver. 9. For the Lord’s portion.] Dear to God, though despised of the world. They are the Lord’s "inheritance," {#Isa 19:25} "peculiar" ones, {#Ex 19:5} the people of his purchase, that comprehended all his gettings, {#1Pe 2:9} his "glory," {#Isa 46:13} his "ornament," {#Eze 7:20} his "throne," {#Jer 4:17} his "diadem," {#Isa 62:3} "heirs of the kingdom," saith St James, {#Jas 2:5} heads destinated to the diadem, saith Tertullian.

Ver. 10. And in the waste howling wilderness.] A figure of the cries of a thirsty and troubled conscience, and of infernal horrors. See #Eze 16:4, &c.

He instructed him.] Both by his word and works, both of mercy and justice; for God’s rods also are vocal. {#Mic 6:9} His house of correction is his school of instruction.

He kept him as the apple of his eye.] The tenderest piece of the tenderest part. The crystal humour, as the philosophers call it. Heb., Ishon, of Ish, as Pupilla of Pupa, because therein appears the likeness of a little man; or because a man is to be prized above all other creatures: so God esteemeth his people above all the world.

Ver. 11. As an eagle stirreth up her nest.] So doth God stir up his people by his word of promise.

Fluttereth over them.] By the motions of his Spirit, as #Ge 1:2.

Spreadeth abroad her wings.] Hovereth and covereth them with his protection. {#Mt 23:37}

Taketh them.] With much tenderness, but nothing comparable to that of God.

Beareth them on her wings.] Aquilae pullos suos in alis portant, alites reliqui inter pedes, saith Munster here, out of Rabbi Solomon. {See Trapp on "Ex 19:4"}

Ver. 12. And there was no strange god with him.] Why, then, should any share with him in his service? Be the gods of the heathen good fellows? saith one. The true God will endure no co-rival.

Ver. 13. To suck honey out of the rock.] Water as sweet as honey in that necessity; so doth every worthy receiver by faith at the sacrament; whereas whoso comes thereunto without faith, is like a man, saith Mr Tindal, that thinks to quench his thirst by sucking the ale bowl.

Ver. 14. With the fat of kidneys of wheat.] With the very best of the best; figuring heavenly dainties, that full feast. {#Isa 25:6} Judea, for its admirable fertility, is called, Sumen totius orbis: how basely soever Strabo speaks of it, as of a dry barren country, wherein he shows less ingenuity than railing Rabshakeh did.

Ver. 15. But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.] Jeshurun, hoc est Integellus, saith one, as Shimshon, or Samson, Solilus, a little sun, but a type of the Sun of Righteousness that hath health in his wings—that is, in his beams. Israel should have been Jeshurun—that is, righteous, or upright before the Lord, Israelites indeed; but were nothing less. If ever they had been better in the time of "their espousals, when they went after God in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown," {#Jer 2:2} yet now that they were full fed, they kicked as young mules when they have sucked, matrem calcibus petunt, kick the dams’ dugs. Fulness breeds forgetfulness, and the best are but too prone to surfeit of things of this life, which by our corruption ofttimes prove a snare to our souls. "I will lay a stumbling block." {#Eze 3:20} Vatablus’s note there is, Faciam, ut omnia habeant prospera; calamitatibus eum a peccato non revocabo; I will prosper him in all things, and not by affliction restrain him from sin. The most poisonous flies are bred in the sweetest fruit trees. How apt are the holiest to be proud and secure! even as worms and wasps eat the sweetest apples and fruits, Repugnante contra temet ipsam tua faelicitate, saith Salvian: {a} to the Church in his time; thy prosperity is thy bane. And Cum ipsis opibus lascivere coepit ecclesia, saith Platina; {b} The Church began to be rich and wanton at once. Religio peperit divitias, et filia devoravit matrem: Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter soon devoured the mother, saith Augustine. The much wool on the sheep’s back is ofttimes his ruin, he is caught in the thorns and famished. The fatter the ox, the sooner to the slaughter. When the Protestants of France began to grow wanton of their prosperity, and to affect a vain frothy way of preaching, then came the cruel massacre upon them. Should we with the fed hawk forget our master? Or being full with God’s benefits, like the full moon, then get farthest off from the sun, and by an interposition of earthly desires become dark? The cords of love are called "the cords of a man." {#Ho 11:4} To sin against mercy is to sin against humanity; it is bestial, nay, it is worse. To render good for evil is divine; to render good for good is humane; to render evil for evil is brutish; but to render evil for good is devilish; as a reverend man hath well observed.

Then he forsook God.] Here Moses, weary of speaking any longer to a gainsaying and disobedient people, turneth his speech to the heaven and earth, whom he had called in to bear witness. {#De 32:1} So, when a certain people of Italy had commanded the Roman ambassador, Ad quercum dicere, se interim alia acturos, to deliver his embassy to the great oak, for they had somewhat else to do than to give him audience: he answered, Et haec sacrata quercus audiat faedus esse a vobis violatum, { c} I will indeed direct my speech to the oak, and tell it in your hearing, that you have basely broken covenant, and shall dearly answer it.

{a} Salvian, lib. i, /@ad Eccles. Catholic./@

{b} In Benedict. 4.

{c} Livy

Ver. 16. They provoked him to jealousy.] {See Trapp on "De 31:29"}

Ver. 17. They sacrificed unto devils.] {See Trapp on "Le 17:7"}

To new gods that came newly up.] Such as are all Popish he-saints and she-saints; concerning whom Bellarmine himself cannot but yield, that Cum scriberentur Scripturae, nondum coeperat usus vovendi Sanctis. {a} There was no vowing, or bowing either, to saints departed, when the Scriptures were written. And a loaf of the like leaven are those new lights, and all subtleties, whereby our sectaries would distinguish themselves from Brownists. Are they not all, or most of them, borrowed out of Mr H. Jacob’s books, who was but of yesterday? The Antinomians usually call upon their hearers to mark; it may be they shall hear some new truth that they never heard before; when the thing is either false, or, if true, no more than ordinarily is taught by others.

{a} Bellarm. de cultu sanct., cap. 5.

Ver. 18. And hast forgotten God that formed thee.] Or, That brought thee forth. Here God is compared to a mother, as in the former clause to a father. So #Jas 1:18, "Of his own will begat he us,"—απεκυησε, He brought us forth, and did the office of a mother to us; which doth notably set forth his love and the work of his grace.

Ver. 19. Of his sons and of his daughters.] Titular at least; wherefore their sin was the greater. "What? Thou, my son Brutus?" {a} This cut Caesar to the heart.

{a} Και συ τεκνον Βρουτε.

Ver. 20. I will see what their end shall be.] This is spoken after the manner of men; as likewise that in #De 32:27.

In whom is no faith, ] i.e., Fidelity; as #Mt 23:23; there is no trusting them, or taking their words.

Ver. 21. And I will move them to jealousy.] Thus God delights to retaliate and proportion jealousy to jealousy, provocation to provocation; so frowardness to frowardness, {#Ps 18:26} contrariety to contrariety. {#De 28:18,21, &c.}

With a foolish nation.] With the conversion of the Gentiles, {#Ro 10:19} which the good Jews could not easily yield to at first. {#Ac 11:2,3} And the rest could never endure to hear of it. See #1Th 2:15,16. At this day they solemnly curse the Christians thrice a day in their synagogues, with a Maledic, Domine, Nazarais. They have a saying in their Talmud, Optimus qui inter gentes est, dignus cui caput conteratur tanquam serpenti; The best among the Gentiles is worthy to have his head broke as the serpent had. Yea, they think they may kill any idolater. Therefore Tacitus saith of them, There was Misericordia in promptu apud suos, sed contra omnes alios hostile odium, mercy enough toward their own, but against all others they bare a deadly hatred.

Ver. 22. For a fire.] {See Trapp on "De 10:4"}

Ver. 23. I will spend mine arrows.] Which yet cannot be all spent up, as he feared of his Jupiter, Si quoties peccent heroines, &c.

Ver. 24. Burnt with hunger.] Which makes men’s visages blacker than a coal. {#La 4:8}

With burning heat, ] i.e., With the burning carbuncle, or plague sore. See #Hab 3:5.

Ver. 25. And terror within.] Warring times are terrible times. By the civil dissensions here in King John’s time, all the kingdom became like a general shambles, or place of infernal terrors and tortures. War, saith one, is a misery which all words, how wide soever, want compass to express. It is, saith another, the slaughter house of mankind, and the hell of this present world. {See Trapp on "Ge 14:2"}

Ver. 26. I said I will scatter them.] See a like text, #Eze 20:8,9. We are sometimes safe by our enemies’ insolences, and as much beholden to their blasphemies as to our own prayers.

Ver. 27. Were it not that I feared.] See #De 32:20.

Lest their adversaries.] This is that, likely, that moves the Lord hitherto to spare England. God hath dealt with us, not according to his ordinary rule, but according to his prerogative. England, if it may be so spoke with reverence, is a paradox to the Bible. Pererius, the Jesuit, commenting upon #Ge 15:16, If any marvel, saith he, why England continueth to flourish, notwithstanding the cruel persecution—just execution, he should have said—of Catholics there; I answer, Because their sin is not yet full: Sed veniet tandem iniquitatiscom plementum, &c. We hope better, though we deserve the worst that can be. But somewhat God will do for his own great name; and lest the enemy exalt himself, {#Ps 140:8} and say, "Our hand is high, the Lord hath not done this."

Ver. 28. For they are a nation.] {See Trapp on "De 4:6"} was Chrysippus that offered that strict and tetrical division to the world, Aut mentem aut restim comparandum.

Ver. 29. Oh that this people were wise.] Sapiens est, cui res sapiunt prout sunt, saith Bernard.

That they would consider their latter end.] This is a high point of heavenly wisdom. Moses himserf desires to learn it. {#Ps 90:12} David also would fain be taught it. {#Ps 39:4} Solomon sets a "better" upon it. {#Ec 7:2} "Jerusalem’s filthiness was in her skirts, because she remembered not her latter end; therefore also she came down wonderfully." {#La 1:9} The kite by the turning of his tail directs and winds about all his body. Consideratio finis tanquam caudae, ad vitam optime regendam confert, saith Berchorins. I meet with a story of one that gave a prodigal a ring with a death’s head, with this condition, that he should one hour daily, for seven days together, look and think upon it, which bred a strange alteration in his life; like that of Thesposius in Plutarch; or that more remarkable of Waldus the rich merchant of Lyons, &c. {a}

{a} Mr Ward’s Sermons

Ver. 30. How should one chase a thousand?] i.e., How should one of the enemies chase a thousand Israelites, who had a promise of better things, {#Le 26:8} but that having first sold themselves for nought, {#Isa 52:3} they were now sold by God, who would own them no longer? {#Ps 31:7,8}

Ver. 31. For their rock is not as our rock.] We may well say, Who is a God like unto thee? {#Mic 7:18} Contemno minutulos istos deos, mode Iovem (Iehovam) mihi propitium habeam; I care not for those dunghill deities, so I may have the true God to favour me.

Even our enemies.] #Ex 14:25 Nu 23:8,12 1Sa 4:8.

Ver. 32. For their vine is of the vine.] Vitis non vinifera, sed venenifera. The vine is the wicked nature, the grapes are the evil works. So #Isa 59:5; -"They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web"; vanity or villainy is their whole trade; "he that eateth of their eggs dieth," &c. Look how the bird that sitteth on the serpent’s eggs, by breaking and hatching them, brings forth a perilous brood to her own destruction: so do those that are yet in the state of nature, being the heirs of original and the fathers of actual sins, which "when they are finished bring forth death." {#Jas 1:15}

Ver. 33. Their wine, ] i.e., Their works, yea, their best works, prove pernicious to them; not their own table only, but God’s table becomes a snare to the unprepared communicant; he sucks there the poison of asps, &c., {#Job 20:16} he eats his bane and drinks his poison: as Henry VII, Emperor, was poisoned in the sacramental bread by a monk; Pope Victor II, by his sub-deacon in his chalice; and one of our Bishops of York, by poison put into the wine at the eucharist.

Ver. 34. Is not this laid up in store?] To wit, for just punishment, though for a while I forbear them. The wicked man is like a thief, which having stolen a horse, rides away well mounted, till, overtaken by hue and cry, he is apprehended, sentenced, and executed. "Your sin will find you out" as a bloodhound; Et patientia Dei erga impios quo diuturnior, eo minacior. Morae dispendium faenoris duplo pensatur; the longer God forbears, the heavier he punishes. {a}

{a} Jerome, in Jerem,

Ver. 35. To me belongeth vengeance and recompense.] The Hebrew word for vengeance, םהז, signifies comfort also; for God will be comforted in the execution of his wrath. {#Eze 5:13} {See Trapp on "De 28:63"} He shows such severity sometimes as if he had blotted that out of his title, {#Ex 34:6} and now took up that Emperor’s motto, Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus.

Their foot shall slide in due time.] "They are set in slippery places"; {#Ps 73:18} they ever walk as upon a mine of gunpowder ready to be blown up: Nemo crimen gerit in pectore, qui non idem Nemesin in tergo. Nemesis dicitur Αδραστεια, quod ουκ αν τις αυτην αποδρασαιτο. God’s wrath is such, as none can avert or avoid.

Ver. 36. And repent himself for his servants.] Thus God mingleth and allayeth the rigour of his justice with the vigour of his mercy.

Ver. 37. And he shall say, ] i.e., He shall upbraid them with the inability of their idols to do for them.

Ver. 38. Which did eat.] Put them to a great deal of charge, but for no profit.

Ver. 39. I, even I am he.] I is emphatical and exclusive.

Ver. 40. And say, I live forever.] God can swear by no greater than himself. {#Heb 6:13}

Ver. 41. If I whet my glittering sword.] God first whets, before he smites; and first takes hold on judgment, before his judgments take hold on men. Est piger ad poenas, ad praemia velox. See the like, #Ps 7:12. God was but six days in making the whole world, yet was he seven days in destroying that one city of Jericho, as Chrysostom observeth. "Fury is not in me." {#Isa 27:4} As a bee stings not till provoked, so God punisheth not "till there be no other remedy." {#2Ch 36:16}

Ver. 42. From the beginning of revenges.] I will begin my revenges at the beginning of theirs. Esau began early with his brother Jacob, even in the very womb, and so held on; but God was even with him.

Ver. 43. Rejoice, O ye nations.] Give God the glory of his just severity, which is no less commendable in a judge than seasonable clemency.

Ver. 44. Of this song.] The Seventy render it, Of this law, as in #De 32:46. So Asaph called his song "a law." {#Ps 78:1}

Ver. 45. And Moses made an end.] He did, and yet he did not, for he had yet still something more to say to them out of his great desire to speak home to their hearts. So the apostle, in #2Co 13:11, and elsewhere, comes in with his το λοιπον, Finally, or, Yet one word more ere we part.

Ver. 46. Set your hearts.] And pray God to fix your quicksilver, to put his holy finger upon the hole that is in the bottom of your memories.

Ver. 47. For it is not a vain thing.] God’s favour is no empty favour, it is not like the winter sun, that casts a goodly countenance when it shines, but gives little comfort and heat.

For it is not a vain thing for you.] You shall not lose your labour; it is sure you have lost many a worse in pursuing after lying vanities, toilsome toys.

Chapter 33

Ver. 1. Before his death.] The words of dying men are living oracles, they should therefore be pious and ponderous.

Ver. 2. Went a fiery law for them.] This fire wherein the law was given, and shall be required, is still in it, and will never out; hence are those terrors which it flasheth in every conscience that hath felt remorse of sin. Every man’s heart is a Sinai, and resembles to him both heaven and hell. "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." {#1Co 15:56}

Ver. 3. Yea, he loved the people.] With a general love, with a common philanthropy. But the love of God in Christ is that we must all labour after; such a love as doth better for a man than restore him to sight, or raise him when bowed down. {#Ps 146:8}

Are in thy hand.] And so in a safe hand. {#Joh 10:29}

And they sat down at thy feet.] As attentive and tractable disciples. See #Ac 22:3 Lu 10:39 2Ki 2:5. "Knowest thou not that the Lord will take thy master from thy head?" A phrase taken from their manner of sitting at the feet of their teachers.

Ver. 4. Moses commanded us a law.] These are the words of those saints above mentioned, expressing their good affection to the law and to Moses, by whose mediation they received it.

Even the inheritance.] For perpetual use to us and our posterity. Indeed, the law lies not upon the righteous, {ου κειται, #1Ti 1:9} nor urgeth them, as it doth upon the wicked. To these the law is as chains and shackles; to those as belts and garters, which gird up their loins, and expedite their course the better. It confines them to live in that element where they would live, as if one should be confined to Paradise, where he would be, though there were no such law.

Ver. 5. And he was king in Jeshurun.] A heroic king, reigning by virtue and justice only, not by force and violence: one that said not, εξεστι, but καηνκει; This I can do, but this is fit for me to do.

When the heads of the people, and the tribes.] Here was a government made up of king, lords, and commons. The best of governments, doubtless, so that the beam be kept right between sovereignty and subjection. The contention between prince and people, about command and obedience, ceased not till the Magna Charta, first obtained of King John, after of his son Henry III, though observed truly of neither, was in the maturity of a judicial prince, Edward I, freely ratified after fourscore years.

Ver. 6. Let Reuben live, and not die.] Let him have a nail and a name in God’s house, notwithstanding the heinousness of his sin, and the severity of Jacob’s sentence. {#Ge 49:4} {See Trapp on "Ge 49:4"}

Ver. 7. And this is the blessing.] Simeon is not mentioned, but implied in Judah’s blessing, in the midst of whose inheritance lay his portion. {#Jos 19:1} Besides, that tribe was exceedingly defiled with fornication, spiritual and corporal, and by that means much decayed and diminished. {#Nu 26:14}

Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah.] Putting thy promises {#Ge 8:9-11} into suit by his prayers, and pressing thee for a performance.

Let his hands be sufficient for him, and be thou a help to him, &c.] Moses first prays for Judah, that "his hands may be sufficient for him": and then addeth, as there was need, "And be thou a help to him": for all "our sufficiency is of God," and that man is sure to come down that standeth on his own legs. Ithiel and Ucal are twins.

Ver. 8. Let thy Thummin and thy Urim.] Sincerity of life and soundness of doctrine. {See Trapp on "Ex 28:30"} There is great cause that ministers, of all men, should be much prayed for.

Ver. 9. Who said unto his father.] In that heroical fact, {#Ex 32:26,29} in that terrible crisis about the golden calf. Not to be wryed or biassed by respect to carnal friends, is a high and hard point of self-denial. Mark was Barnabas’s sister’s son; hence he stood so stiff for him against Paul, his faithful fellow traveller. {#Ac 15:37 Col 4:10} Moses, to please Zipporah, displeased God, and it went hard with him. {#Ex 4:24} Eli was too indulgent to his wicked sons; and so perhaps was Samuel too. {#1Sa 8:1,3} How many of the holy martyrs denied themselves utterly in their dearest wives and children, either at the stake, or going thither! It is well observed, that the married martyrs, parents of many children, as Rogers, Watts, Guest, Rawlins, suffered with most alacrity.

Ver. 10. They shall teach Jacob.] Apt and able to teach must all ministers be, as Paul. {#Ac 20:18-35} Praedicationis officium suscipit, quisquis ad sacerdotium accedit, saith Gregory: He is no minister that is no teacher. Aidanus, the first bishop of Durham, A.D. 636, neglected no duty of a good pastor, travelling up and down the country, even on foot, to preach the gospel, giving whatsoever he could get unto the poor, and by the example of his own virtues instructing, as well as by word and doctrine. {a} Amongst the Greeks, tragedians and comedians were said, εις διδαχην ων προσηκεν εργαζομενοι, to labour in teaching the people. What should ministers then do?

They shall put incense before thee, ] i.e., Pray for the people, as well as preach to them. So #Ac 6:4. Augustine’s wish was, that Christ, when he came, might find him aut precantem aut praedicantem, praying or preaching. Bene orasse est bene studuisse, saith Luther.

{a} Godwin’s Catalog.

Ver. 11 And of them that hate him.] Ministers shall be sure of many enemies: they hate him that reproveth in the gate. Veritas odium parit; praedieare nihil aliud est quam derivare in se furorem mundi, said Luther: to preach is to get the world’s ill-will. "Ye are the light," saith our Saviour, which is offensive to sore eyes; "ye are the salt of the earth," which is bitter to wounds, and causeth pain to ulcerated parts.

Ver. 12. The beloved of the Lord.] The Lord’s corculum, deliciae, darling; as their father Benjamin was old Jacob’s. {#Ge 42:4}

And he shall dwell between his shoulders.] These shoulders are those two holy hills, Moriah and Zion, whereon the Temple was built, four hundred and forty years after this prophecy.

Ver. 13. And of Joseph.] {See Trapp on "Ge 49:2"}

Ver. 14. And for the precious fruits.] So St James calleth them, "The precious fruits of the earth." {#Jas 5:7} Diogenes justly taxed the folly of his countrymen, Quod res pretiosas minimo emerent, venderentque vilissimas plurimo, because they bought precious things, as grain, very cheap, but sold the basest things, as pictures, statues, &c., extremely dear, fifty pounds or more a-piece; though the life of man had no need of a statue, but could not subsist without grain. May not we more justly tax men for undervaluing the bread of life, and "spending money for that which is not bread?" {#Isa 4:1}

Ver. 15. And for the chief things.] Metals and minerals usually dug out of mountains, which are here called ancient and lasting, because they have been from the beginning, and were not first cast up, as some have held, by Noah’s flood. {#Ps 90:2}

Ver. 16. And for the good will of him, &c.] {See Trapp on "Ex 33:2"} The burning bush—the persecuted Church—was not consumed, because the good will of God, whereof David speaks, {#Ps 106:4} was in the bush. So it is still with his in the fiery trial, in any affliction. {#Isa 43:1}

That was separated from his brethren.] To be a choice and chief man amongst them. Nobilis fuit inter fratres, saith Augustine, {a} vel in malis quae pendit, vel in bonis quae rependit.

{a} De Doct. Christ., lib. iv. cap. 6.

Ver. 17. His horns are like the horns of unicorns.] Justin Martyr {a} and some other of the ancients {b} have strangely racked and wrested this text, to wring out of it the sign of the cross, resembled and represented by the horn of a unicorn. At nihil hic de Christo, nihil de cruce.

He shall push the people together.] As General Joshua, of this tribe, did notably; so that Phoenicians ran away into a far country, and renowned his valour by a monument set up in Africa. Howbeit, Gratius ei fuit nomen pietatis, quam potestatis, as Tertullian saith of Augustus: He is more famous for his piety than for his prowess.

{a} Advers. Tryph.

{b} Tertul. Adver. Judaeos, cap. 10. Ambrose, De Benedict. Pat.

Ver. 18. In thy going out.] To trade and traffic by sea. {#Ge 49:13} Peterent coelum navibus Belgoe, si navibus peti posset, saith one. The lowcountry men are said to grow rich by war; it is sure they do by trade at sea.

And, Issachar, in thy tents, ] i.e., In thy quiet life and country employments.

“ O fortunatos nimium, &c.

Regain aequabat opes animis, seraque reversus

Nocta domum, dapibus mensas onerabit inemptis.’’—Virg.

saith the poet, of a well contented countryman.

Ver. 19. They shall call the people to the mount, ] i.e., To God’s house, situate on mount Zion. Though they be Littorales, men dwelling by the sea shore, which are noted to be Duri, horridi, immanes, omnium denique pessimi, the worst kind of people; and though they dwell farther from the Temple, yet are they not farthest from God, but ready with their sacrifice of righteousness, as those that have sucked of the abundance of the sea, and of treasures hid in the sand, which, though of itself it yield no crop, yet brings in great revenues, by reason of sea trading.

Ver. 20. He dwelleth as a lion.] That should make his party good with the enemy, upon whom he bordereth, and by whom he is often invaded. See #Ge 49:19 Jud 11:5,13 1Ch 12:8.

Ver. 21. In a portion of the lawgiver.] That portion that Moses the lawgiver assigned him on the other side Jordan. {#Nu 32:33}

He executed the justice of the Lord, ] viz., Upon the Canaanites; which is so noble an act that even the good angels refuse not to be executioners of God’s judgments upon obstinate malefactors.

Ver. 22. He shall leap from Bashan, ] i.e., He shall suddenly set upon his enemies; as Ahithophel counselled Absalom, {#2Sa 17:1,2} and this is called "good counsel"; {#2Sa 17:14} and as Caesar served Pompey,

“… Caesar in omnia praeceps,

Nil actum credens, dum quid superesset agendum,

Fertur atro…’’—Lucan.

Ver. 23. Satisfied with favour, and full, &c.] Fulness of blessing is then only a mercy, when the soul of a man is satisfied with favour: when from a full table and a cup running over, a man can comfortably infer with David, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." {#Ps 23:6} One may have outward things by God’s providence, and not out of his favour. Esau had the like blessing as Jacob, but not with a "God give thee the dew of heaven," as he. {#Ge 27:28} Or, God may give temporals to wicked men, to furnish their indictment out of them; as Joseph put his cup into their sack to pick a quarrel with them, and to lay theft to them.

Ver. 24. Let Asher be blessed with children.] Let his wife be as the vine, and his children as olive plants, two of the best fruits; {#Ps 128:3} the one for cheering the heart, the other for clearing the face; {#Ps 104:15} the one for sweetness, the other for fatness. {#Jud 9:9,13}

Let him dip his foot in oil.] Like that of Job. {#Job 29:6} Compare #Ge 49:20. {See Trapp on "Ge 49:20"}

Ver. 25. Thy shoes.] Thou shalt have store of mines.

And as thy days shall thy strength be, ] i.e., Thou shalt {as Eliphaz speaketh, #Job 5:26} come in a lusty old age to the grave. This the Greeks call ευγηρια. And the Hebrews made a feast when they were past sixty, if any whit healthy.

Ver. 26. Who rideth upon the heaven.] Having the celestial creatures for his cavalry, and the terrestrial for his infantry; how then can his want help?

Ver. 27. The eternal God.] Heb., The God of antiquity, that "Ancient of days," that "Rock of ages," "who is before all things, and by whom all things consist," {#Col 1:17} who is "the first and the last, and besides whom there is no God." {#Isa 44:6}

And underneath are the everlasting arms.] A saint cannot fall so far as to fall beneath the supporting arms of God: {#So 2:6} his hand is reserved for a dead lift.

Ver. 28. Israel then shall dwell, &c.] {See Trapp on "Nu 23:9"}

The fountain of Jacob.] Or as some read it, The eye of Jacob. The same word signifies both an eye and a fountain. He that, with Mary Magdalen, can make his eye a fountain to wash Christ’s feet in, shall be sure to have that fountain of Christ’s blood opened to wash his soul in. {#Zec 13:1}

Ver. 29. Happy art thou, O Israel.] Or, Oh the happinesses of thee, O Israel! the μυριομακαριοτης, the heaped up happiness!

Who is like unto thee!] The saints are the world’s paragons, yea, such as the world is not worthy of; {#Heb 11} that is, saith Chrysostom, Take all the men of the world, they are not worth one of the people of God, though never so mean in regard of outwards.

Shall be found liars.] Shall feign to be friends for fear, and shall yield a forced obedience. See #Ps 18:45.

Chapter 34

Ver. 1. And Moses went up.] With as good a will to die, as ever he did to dine; for it was but (as that martyr said) winking a little, and he was in heaven immediately.

Ver. 2. Unto the utmost sea.] The Mediterranean.

Ver. 3. The city of palm trees.] So called even by heathen authors also.

Ver. 4. I have caused thee to see it.] By an extraordinary power, for in an ordinary way Moses could never have taken so large a prospect at once. Faith puts a man’s head into heaven, and gives him a view of far better things; neither vision only, but fruition also, which Moses had not.

Ver. 5. So Moses the servant of the Lord died.] It was no more between God and Moses, but Go up and die; he changed indeed his place, but not his company; death was to him but the daybreak of eternal brightness.

According to the word of the Lord.] Heb., Upon the mouth of the Lord. Hence Cornelius a Lapide saith he heard one preach, that Moses died kissed by God. The Jewish doctors so expound this text, as though God did indeed take away his soul with a kiss (the loving mother we have seen kiss the child, and then lay it down to sleep); and so of their 903 kinds of death, this they say is the easiest. {a} God bade Moses go lie down and sleep, {#De 31:16} and he accordingly went to bed, when his Father bade.

{a} Maimonid.

Ver. 6. And he buried him.] Either the Lord or Michael. {#Jude 1:9} There lies the body of Moses as in a chamber of rest, or bed of down. {#Isa 57:2} His very dust being precious; for Christ is not perfect without it. {#Eph 1:23}

But no man knoweth of his sepulchre.] Though the devil made much ado about it, {#Jude 1:9} as desirous thereby to set up himself in the hearts of the living. So Chrysostom, Theodoret, Procopius, and others think: howbeit we find not anywhere that the Jews were addicted to this kind of idolatry, viz., of worshipping the relics of saints departed. {a} But of Michael’s dispute with the devil, about the body of Moses, we read in Origen {b} and others, {c} that (besides what Jude hath) there was in the primitive times a certain Apocryphal book, called Μωυσεως Αναληψις, the Assumption of Moses, wherein it was recorded, and where hence haply Jude had it.

{a} λειψανολατρια.

{b} Περι αρχων, lib. iii. cap. 2.

{c} Abath R. Nathan.

Ver. 7. Nor his natural force {a} abated.] Jerome reads it, Nor his teeth loosed. And the use of manna might be some reason, it being an exquisitely pure kind of food, of an aerial, and not very corruptible substance.

{a} החל gena, maxilla.

Ver. 8. And the children of Israel wept.] And were ready to wish, likely, as the Romans did for Augustus, that either he had never been born, or never died.

Thirty days.] As before they had done for Aaron. {#Nu 20:29} The Jewish doctors tell us that Moses was born on the seventh day of the month Adar (which answereth to our February), and that on the seventh day of the same month Adar he was taken out of the world, being exactly 120 years old. One third part of his days he spent in Egypt, another in Midian, and the last in conducting this people to the borders of Canaan, as Josephus {a} well observeth. The Jews to this day keep a solemn fast on the seventh of Adar, in remembrance of his death.

{a} Antiq., lib. iv. ad fin.

Ver. 9. And Joshua the son of Nun.] Sic uno avulso, non deficit alter Aureus. The Duke of Florence gave for his ensign, a great tree, with many spreading boughs, one of them being cut off, with this above said motto, As one is broke off another riseth up in the room. {a}

{a} Pintus in Dan. iv.

Ver. 10. And there arose not.] This testimony, and indeed this whole chapter, is thought to have been added by Joshua or Eleazar, being divinely inspired, for the completing of the history, famous throughout the world; approved and expounded by all the holy prophets and apostles, who out of this fountain, or rather ocean of divinity, {a} as Theodoret calleth Moses, have watered their various gardens; yea, in pressing moral duties, what do they else but explain the Pentateuch? What do they but unfold and draw out that arras {a rich tapestry fabric} which was folded together before? Surely the Pentateuch may well claim the title, De Originibus, above all other writings. And of Moses, the penman thereof, it may far better be said, than it was once of heathen Homer, that neither before him was there any whom he might imitate, nor after him any that could imitate him. {b} But what a notoriously arrogant fool was Henry Nicholas, the founder of the Familists (if that were true of him, which is reported by a writer of good note) {c} viz., that he boasted among his followers in Holland, that himself ought to be preferred before both Moses and Christ; because Moses taught hope, Christ faith, but he taught love, which was the greatest of those three graces. He said, moreover, that Moses stood in the outer court, Christ entered into the holy place, but that himself was entered into the holy of holies; yea, he blasphemously gave out that he did partake with God of his deity, and God with him of his humanity.

{a} Theodoretus Mosem appellat, τον της θεολογιας ωκεανον

{b} Patercul.

{c} Ich. Laet. Compend. Hist, Univers., p. 583.

Ver. 11. In all the signs.] Here endeth the Pentateuch, which comprehendeth the history of 2552 years and a half, from the beginning of the world; and is all (as some hold) that was translated by the Septuagint. {a}

{a} Schickard.

Ver. 12. {See Trapp on "De 34:11"}

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34