beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping

things of the earth; and bow, and sword, and war I break out

of the land, and make them to dwell in safety."

On the expression, "I make a covenant," Manger remarks, "The cause is here put for the effect, in order to inspire with greater security." For the benefit of Israel, God makes a covenant with the beasts, i.e., He imposes upon them obligations not to injure them. The phrase כרת ברית is frequently used of a transaction betwixt two parties, whereby an obligation is imposed upon only one of the parties, without the assumption of any obligation by the other. A somewhat different turn is given to the image in Job v. 23, where, by the mediation of God, the beasts themselves enter into a covenant with Job after his restoration. רמש never means "worm," but always "what moves and creeps," both small and great, as, in Ps. civ. 25, is subjoined by way of explanation. The three classes stand in the same order in Gen. ix. 2. The normal order there established, "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast," etc., returns, after the removal of the disturbance which has been produced by sin. Upon the words, "I break," etc., Manger makes the very pertinent remark: "It is an emphatic and expressive brevity, according to which breaking out of the land all instruments of war, and war itself, means that He will break them and remove them out of the land." It is self-evident that "war" can here, as little as anywhere else, mean "weapons of war." The prophet, as it appears, had in view the passage Lev. xxvi. 3 ff.: "If ye will walk in My statutes, and keep My commandments and do them, I will give you your rains in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.... And I give peace in the land, and you dwell, and there is none who makes you afraid; and I destroy the wild beasts out of the land, and the sword shall not enter into your land." It is so much the more obvious that we ought to assume a reference to this passage, as Ezekiel also, in xxxiv. 25 ff., copies it almost verbatim. On account of the fatal If, that promise had hitherto been only very imperfectly fulfilled; and frequently just the opposite of it had happened. But now that the condition is fulfilled, the promise also shall be fully realized. But we must observe, with reference to it, that, when we look to the present course of the world, this hope remains always more or less ideal, because in reference to the condition also, the idea is not yet reached by the reality. The idea is this:—As evil is, as a punishment, the inseparable concomitant of sin, so prosperity and salvation are the inseparable companions of righteousness. This is realized even in the present course of the world, in so far as everything must serve to promote the prosperity of the righteous. But the full realization belongs to the παλινγενεσία, where, along with sin, evil too (which is here still necessary even for the righteous, in order to purify them) shall be extirpated. Parallel are Is. ii. 4, xi.-xxxv. 9; Zech. ix. 10.

Ver. 21. "And I betroth thee to Me for eternity; and I betroth thee to Me in righteousness and judgment, and in loving-kindness and mercy."

Ver. 22. "And I betroth thee to Me in faithfulness, and thou knowest the Lord."

The word ארש, "to espouse" (compare Deut. xx. 7, where it is contrasted with לקח), has reference to the entrance into a marriage entirely new, with the wife of youth, and is, for this reason, chosen on purpose. "Just as if (so Calvin remarks) the people had never violated conjugal fidelity, God promises that they should be His spouse, in the same manner as one marries a virgo intacta." It was indeed a great mercy if the unfaithful wife was only received again. Justly might she have been rejected for ever; for the only valid reason for a divorce existed, inasmuch as she had lived in adultery for years. But God's mercy goes still further. The old offences are not only forgiven, but forgotten. A relation entirely new begins, into which there enter, on the one side, no suspicion and no bitterness, and on the other, no painful recollections, such as may pass into similar human relationships, where the consequences of sin never disappear altogether, and where a painful remembrance always remains. The same dealing of God is still repeated daily; every believer may still say with exultation: "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." It is the greatness of this promise which occasions the direct address, whilst hitherto the Lord had spoken of the wife in the third person. She shall hear face to face, the great word out of His mouth, in order that she may be assured that it is she whom it concerns; and in order to express its greatness, its joyfulness, and the difficulty of believing it, it is repeated three times. Calvin says: "Because it was difficult to deliver the people from fear and despair, and because they could not but be aware how grievously they had sinned, and in how many ways they had alienated themselves from God, it was necessary to employ many consolations, that thus their faith might be confirmed. One likes to hear the repetition of the intelligence of a great and unexpected good fortune which one has some difficulty in realizing. And what could a man, despairing on account of his sins, less readily realize than the greatest of all miracles—viz., that all his sins should be done away with, at once and for ever? But the repetition is, in this case, so much the more full of consolation, that, each time, it is accompanied with the promise of some new blessing; that, each time, it opens up some new prospect of new blessings from this new connection. First, there is the eternal duration,—then, as a pledge of this, the attributes which God would display in bestowing it,—and, finally, there are the blessings which He would impart to His betrothed." The לעולם points back to the painful dissolution of the former marriage-covenant: This new one shall not be liable to such a dissolution; for "the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord:" Is. liv. 10. The attributes which God will display towards the wife, and the conduct which she shall observe towards Him through His mercy, are connected with ארשתיך לי, "I betroth thee to Me," by means of ב, which is often used to mark the circumstances on which some action rests. Thus, in the case before us, the betrothment rests upon what God vouchsafes along with it, inasmuch as thereby only does it become a true betrothment. That the accompanying gifts must be thus distributed—as we have done—first, the faithful discharge of all the duties of a husband on His part, and then, the inward communication of strength to her for the fulfilment of her obligations; and that we are neither at liberty to refer, as do some interpreters, everything to one of the two parties, nor to assume, as others do, that everything refers to both at the same time—is proved not only by the intervening repetition of "I betroth thee to Me," but also by the internal nature of the gift's mentioned. רחמים, "mercy," cannot be spoken of in the relation of the wife to God, nor knowledge of God, in the relation of God to the wife. The four manifestations of God which are mentioned here form a double pair,—righteousness and judgment, loving-kindness and mercy. The two are frequently connected in a similar way; e.g., Is. i. 27: "Zion shall be redeemed in judgment, and her inhabitants in righteousness." They are distinguished thus:—the former, צדק, designates the being just, as a subjective attribute, with the dispositions and actions flowing from it; the latter, משפט, denotes the objective right.[1] A man can give to another his right or judgment, and yet not be righteous; but God's righteousness, and His doing right in reference to the Congregation, consists in this:—that He faithfully performs the obligations which He took upon Himself when He entered into covenant with her. This, however, is not sufficient. The obligations entered into are reciprocal. If, then, the covenant be violated on the part of the Congregation, what hope is left for her? In order the more to relieve and comfort the wife, who, from former experience, knew full well what she might expect from righteousness and judgment alone, the Lord adds a second pair,—loving-kindness and mercy, the former being the root of the latter, and the latter being the form in which the former manifests itself, in the relation of an omnipotent and holy God to weak and sinful man. חסד, properly "love," man may also entertain towards God; although even this word is very rarely used in reference to man, because God's love infinitely exceeds human love; but God only can have רחמים, "mercy," upon man. But still a distressing thought might, and must be entertained by the wife. God's mercy and love have their limits; they extend only to the one case which dissolves even human marriage—the type of the heavenly marriage, the great mystery which the Apostle refers to Christ and the Church. What, then, if this case should again occur? Her heart, it is true, is now filled with pure love; but who knows whether this love shall not cool,—whether she shall not again yield to temptation? A new consolation is applied to the new distress. God Himself will bestow what it is not in the power of man to bestow—viz., faithfulness towards Him (compare אמונה used of human faithfulness, in Hab. ii. 4; Jer. v. 3, vii. 28; the faithfulness in this verse forms the contrast to the whoredom in i. 2), and the knowledge of Him. "Thou knowest the Lord" is tantamount to—"in My knowledge." The knowledge of God is here substantial knowledge. Whosoever thus knows God cannot but love Him, and be faithful to Him. All idolatry, all sin, has its foundation in a want of the knowledge of God.

Ver. 23. "And it comes to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord; I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; Ver. 24. And the earth shall hear the corn, and the must, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel" (i.e., him whom God sows).

The promise in this passage forms the contrast to the threatening in Deut. xxviii. 23, 24: "And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. The Lord will give for the rain of thy land, dust, and dust shall come down from heaven upon thee." The second אענה is, by most interpreters, considered as a resumption of the first. But we obtain a far more expressive sense, if we isolate the first אענה, "I shall hear," namely, all prayers which will be offered up unto Me by you, and for you. Parallel, among other passages, is Is. lviii. 9, where the reformed people are promised: "Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and He shall say. Here I am." By a bold prosopopœia, the prophet makes heaven to pray that it might be permitted to give to the earth that which is necessary for its fruitfulness, etc. Hitherto they have been hindered from fulfilling their destination, since God was obliged to withdraw His gifts from the unworthy people, ii. 11; but now, since this obstacle has been removed, they pray for permission to resume their vocation. The prophets in this manner give, as it were, a visible representation of the idea, that there is in the whole world no good independent of God,—nothing which, in accordance with its destination, is not ours, and would indeed be ours, if we stood in the right relation to Him,—nothing that is not His, and that will not be taken away from us, if we desire the gift without the Giver. Calvin remarks: "The prophet shows where and when the happiness of men begins, viz., when God adopts them, when He betrothes Himself to them, after having put away their sins.... He teaches, also, in these words, that the heavens do not become dry by some secret instinct; but it is when God withholds His grace, that there is no rain by which the heavens water the earth." God, then, here shows plainly that the whole order of nature (as men are wont to say) is so entirely in His hand, that not one drop of rain shall fall from heaven unless by His will,—that the whole earth would produce no grass,—that, in short, all nature would be sterile, unless He made it fruitful by His blessing.

Ver. 25. "And I sow her unto Me in the land, and I have mercy upon her 'who had not obtained mercy' (Lo-Ruhamah); and I say to 'not My people' (Lo-Ammi), Thou art My people, and they say to Me, My God."