A Joyful Salutation and God’s Response
Hear, O My people, a most impressive appeal, and I will testify unto thee; O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto Me! The Lord now states the terms of the solemn covenant between Himself and Israel.
V. 9. There shall no strange god be in thee, every form of idolatry being an abomination before Him; neither shalt thou worship any strange god. V. 10. I am the Lord, thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, Exodus 20, 2; open thy mouth wide, to receive the great spiritual blessings due to the people of the covenant, and I will fill it, He alone being able to give the full and lasting satisfaction of peace and blessedness.
V. 11. But My people would not hearken to My voice, as events after the giving of the Law showed; and Israel would none of Me, disobedience and self-will being its outstanding characteristics.
V. 12. So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust, their stubbornness, that being God’s punishment upon the stubborn and rebellious of all times; and they walked, were engaged in and with, their own counsels, totally estranged to Yahweh.
V. 13. Oh, that My people had hearkened unto Me, and Israel had walked in My ways! In that event their entire history would have had a different cast, and their fate would not have been so sad.
V. 14. I should soon have subdued their enemies, whom they were too indifferent to drive out completely, Judges 1 and 2, and turned My hand against their adversaries, to exterminate them altogether.
V. 15. The haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto Him, brought into subjection by the almighty power of the Lord; but their time, that of the children of Israel, their pleasant relations with the covenant God, should have endured forever.
V. 16. He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat, with the richest blessings of His goodness and mercy; and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee. Compare Deuteronomy 32, 1-47.
Such is the earnest appeal of the Lord as it finds its application in the Church, also of the New Testament, a sermon which should be heeded especially in these last days of indifference and enmity toward God.