outlines and suggestive comments.
Could anything be more bold? Mark the compass—first, of subject, the whole stream as the gardener turns it; second, of object, “whithersoever” or anything He pleases; and third, of sovereignty; its pleasing Him, that being the only test. The “king” may be Cæsar. His lip may make new geographies (ch. xvi. 10). His “heart” may change the history of all things. And yet, like a vineyard’s channels diverted by a child, the Pharaoh’s heart is in the fingers of the Most High. . . . Upon whatsoever. Not toward anything. A stream may be turned in a new direction to get rid of it. God has no such streams. It is turned on something. For God has an end to answer when He rules even the vilest of fiends.—Miller.
Whether, in the second line, the pleasant refreshing influence of the rivulets, dispensing blessing and increase, comes into account as a point of the comparison, is uncertain (comp. Isa. xxxii. 2); this, however, is not improbable, inasmuch as the heart of a king may in fact become in an eminent degree a fountain of blessing for many thousands, and, according to God’s design, ought to be so. See chap. xvi. 15.—Lange’s Commentary.
For Homiletics on verse 2 see on chap. [xvi. 2], page 454.
main homiletics of verse 3.
The More Acceptable Sacrifice.
I. The sacrifices of the Mosaic law were acceptable to God as ceremonial signs. They were instituted by God, and therefore He expected them to be offered, and was displeased when His commands concerning them were disregarded. But they were but the means to an end, and if they did not lead to that end they were worthless in His sight. They were intended to awaken a sense of sin, and to be accompanied by observance of higher precepts and by obedience to more enduring laws. It availed nothing for a man to offer his bullock or his goat unless he laid his will upon the altar at the same time—no sin-offering could be acceptable to God unless the sin was put away, and no meat-offering could be regarded with favour if the heart of the offeror was without love to his neighbour and his life was marked by acts of injustice to him. It was of no avail to come before the Lord with “thousands of rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil,” unless the higher requirement was fulfilled—to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God (Micah vi. 7, 8).
II. The doing of justice and judgment is more acceptable to God because it is a moral reality. To love our neighbour as ourself is in itself good,—it is a moral attribute, an element of character, a part of the man himself. It is an expression of love to God and obedience to His commands which can be made anywhere and at all times, for to do justice and judgment is the law of the moral universe, and belongs to heaven as much as to earth. It is to do what God has been doing from all eternity, for it is written that they “are the habitation of His throne” (Psa. lxxxix. 14). All other offerings without these are “vain oblations,” and even “an abomination” (Isa. i. 13) unto Him who owns “every beast of the forest and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psa. l. 10). To expect a holy and spiritual Being to accept anything less than a moral reality is to expect Him to be satisfied with less than would often content a fellow-creature.
outlines and suggestive comments.
Sacrifice; literally, slaughter. But with slender exceptions, the slaughter is a slaughter for sacrifice. . . . He did not love the slaughtering of His Son upon the cross. He did not love the slaughtering of beasts year by year continually. On the contrary, He does love righteousness, and, therefore, He does love, in the severities that men impugn, that very element of right which is the attribute that they would bring into the question. Doing righteousness Himself, He prefers the right-doing of His creatures to any form of sacrifice or possible service they can ever render.—Miller.