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The "woe," having gone round the pagan nations, again circles round where it began, the "Jerusalem that killed the prophets and stoned those that were sent unto her" Matthew 23:37. Woe upon her, and joy to the holy Jerusalem, the "new Jerusalem Revelation 3:12; Revelation 21:10, the Jerusalem which is from above, the mother of us all," close this prophecy; both in figure; destruction of her and the whole earth, in time, the emblem of the eternal death; and the love of God, the foretaste of endless joy in Him.

Woe - "Rebellious and polluted;" "thou oppressive city!" . The address is the more abrupt, and bursts more upon her, since the prophet does not name her. He uses as her proper name, not her own name, city of peace," but "rebellious," "polluted;" then he sums up in one, thou "oppressive city."

Jerusalem's sin is threefold, actively rebelling against God; then, inwardly defiled by sin; then cruel to man. So then, toward God, in herself, toward man, she is wholly turned to evil, not in passing acts, but in her abiding state:

(1) rebellious

(2) defiled

(3) oppressive

She is known only by what she has become, and what has been done for her in vain. She is rebellious, and so had had the law; defiled, and so had been cleansed; and therefore her state is the more hopeless.

She obeyed not the Voice - Of God, by the law or the prophets, teaching her His ways; and when, disobeying, He chastened her, "she received not correction," and when He increased His chastisements, she, in the declining age of the state and deepening evil, turned not unto Him, as in the time of the judges, nor ceased to do evil.

In the Lord she trusted not - But in Assyria or Egypt or her idols. Our practical relation to God is summed up in the four words, "Mis-trust self; trust God." Man reverses this, and when "self-trust" has of course failed him, then he "mistrusts God" . "Such rarely ask of God, what they hope they may obtain from man. They strain every nerve of their soul to obtain what they want; canvass, flatter, fawn, bribe, court favor; and betake themselves to God when all human help fails. They would be indebted, not to God, but to their own diligence. For the more they receive of God, the less, they see, can they exalt their own diligence, the more they are bound to thank God, and obey Him the more strictly."

To her God she drew not nigh - Even in trouble, when all draw near unto Him, who are not wholly alien from Him; she drew not near by repentance, by faith hope or love, or by works meet for repentance, but in heart remained far from Him. And yet He was "her" own "God," as He had shown Himself in times past, who changes not, while we change; is faithful to us, while we fail Him; is still our God, while we forget Him; "waits, to have mercy upon us;" shines on us while we interpose our earth-born clouds between us and Him. Dionysius: "Not in body nor in place, but spiritually and inwardly do we approach to the uncircumscribed God," owning Him as our Father, to whom we daily say "Our Father."

The prophet having declared the wickedness of the whole city, rehearses how each in Church and state, the ministers of God in either, who should have corrected the evil, themselves aggravated it. Not enemies, without, destroy her, but

Her princes within her - In the very midst of the flock, whom they should in God's stead "feed with a true heart," destroy her as they will, having no protection against them. "Her judges are evening wolves" (see Habakkuk 1:8); these who should in the Name of God redress all grievances and wrongs, are themselves like wild beasts, when most driven by famine. "They gnaw not the bones until the morrow or on the morrow" (literally, in the morning). They reserve nothing until the morning light, but do in darkness the works of darkness, shrinking from the light, and, in extreme rapacity, devouring at once the whole substance of the poor. As Isaiah says, "Thy princes are rebellious and companions of thieves" Isaiah 1:23, and "The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of His people and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard: the spoil of the poor is in your houses" Isaiah 3:14. And Ezekiel, "Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves, ravening the prey to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain" Ezekiel 22:27.

Her prophets are light - , boiling and bubbling, up, like water boiling over , empty boasters claiming the gift of prophecy, which they have not; "boldly and rashly pouring out what they willed as they willed;" promising good things which shall not be. So they are "her" prophets, to whom they "prophesy smooth things" (see Micah 2:11), "the prophets of this people" not the prophets of God; "treacherous persons" (literally, men of treacheries) wholly given to manifold treacheries against God in whose Name they spake and to the people whom they deceived. Jerome: "They spake as if from the mouth of the Lord and uttered everything against the Lord." "The leaders of the people," those who profess to lead it aright, Isaiah says, "are its misleaders" (Isaiah 9:15 (Isaiah 9:16 in English)). "Thy prophets," Jeremiah says, "have seen vain and foolish things for thee; they have seen for thee false visions and causes of banishment" Lamentations 2:14.

Her priests have polluted her sanctuary - Literally, "holiness," and so holy rites, persons Ezra 8:28, things, places (as the sanctuary), sacrifices. All these they polluted, being themselves polluted; they polluted first themselves, then the holy things which they handled, handling them as they ought not; carelessly and irreverently, not as ordained by God; turning them to their own use and self-indulgence, instead of the glory of God; then they polluted them in the eyes of the people, "making them to abhor the offering of the Lord" 1 Samuel 2:17, since, living scandalously, they themselves regarded the Ministry entrusted to them by God so lightly. Their office was to "put difference between holy and unholy and between clean and unclean, and to teach the children all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by Moses" Leviticus 10:10-11; that they "should sanctify themselves and be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Leviticus 11:44; Leviticus 19:2, etc.). But they on the contrary, God says by Ezekiel, "have done violence to My law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no difference between holy and profane, and have taught none between clean and unclean" Ezekiel 22:26. "Holy" and "unholy" being the contradictory of each other, these changed what God had hallowed into its exact contrary. It was not a mere short-coming, but an annihilation (so to speak), of God's purposes.

Cyril: "The priests of the Church then must keep strict watch, not to profane holy things. There is not one mode only of profaning them, but many and divers. For priests ought to be purified both in soul and body, and to cast aside every form of abominable pleasure. Rather should they be resplendent with zeal in well-doing, remembering what Paul saith, 'walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh' Galatians 5:16."

They have oppressed, done violence, to the law - Openly violating it ; or straining it, or secretly wresting and using its forms to wrong and violence, as in the case of Naboth and of Him, of whom Naboth thus far bore the Image. "'We have a law, and by our law He ought to die' John 19:7. Law exists to restrain human violence; these reversed God's ordinances; violence and law changed places: first, they did violence to the majesty of the law, which was the very voice of God, and then, through profaning it, did violence to man. Forerunners herein of those, who, when Christ came, "transgressed the commandment of God, and made it of none effect by their traditions" Matthew 15:6; omitting also the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy and faith; full of extortion and excess!" Matthew 23:23, Matthew 23:25.

But, beside these "evening wolves in the midst of her," there standeth Another "in the midst of her," whom they knew not, and so, very near to them although they would not draw near to Him. But He was near, to behold all the iniquities which they did in the very city and place called by His Name and in His very presence; He was in her to protect, foster her with a father's love, but she, presuming on His mercy, had cast it off. And so He was near to punish, not to deliver; as a Judge, not as a Saviour. Dionysius: "God is everywhere, Who says by Jeremiah, 'I fill heaven and earth' Jeremiah 23:24. But since, as Solomon attesteth, 'The Lord is far from the wicked' Proverbs 15:29, how is He said here to be in the midst of these most wicked men? Because the Lord is far from the wicked, as regards the presence of love and grace; still in His Essence He is everywhere, and in this way He is equally present to all."

The Lord is in the midst thereof; He will not do iniquity - Dionysius: "Since He is the primal rule and measure of all righteousness; therefore from the very fact that He doeth anything, it is just, for He cannot do amiss, being essentially holy. Therefore He will give to every man what he deserves. Therefore we chant, 'The Lord is upright, and there is no unrighteousness in Him' Psalm 92:15." justice and injustice, purity and impurity, cannot be together. God's presence then must destroy the sinners, if not the sin. He was "in the midst of them," to sanctify them, giving them His judgments as a pattern of theirs; "He will not do iniquity:" but if they heeded it not, the judgment would fall upon themselves. It were for God to become "such an one as themselves" Psalm 50:21, and to connive at wickedness, were He to spare at last the impenitent.

Every morning - (Literally, in the morning, in the morning) one after the other, quickly, openly, daily, continually, bringing all secret things, all works of darkness, to light, as He said to David, "Thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun" 2 Samuel 12:12. Doth He bring His judgments to light," so that no sin should be hidden in the brightness of His Light, as He said by Hosea, "Thy judgments are a light which goeth forth." Cyril: "Morning by morning, He shall execute His judgments, that is, in bright day and visibly, not restraining His anger, but bringing it forth in the midst, and making it conspicuous, and, as it were, setting in open vision what He had foreannounced." Day by day God gives some warning of His judgments. By chastisements which are felt to be His on this side or on that or all around, He gives ensamples which speak to the sinner's heart. "He faileth not." As God said by Habakkuk, that His promises, although they seem to "linger," were not "behind" Habakkuk 2:3 the real time, which lay in the Divine Mind, so, contrariwise, neither are His judgments. His hand is never missing at the appointed time. "But the unjust," he, whose very being and character, "iniquity," is the exact contrary to what he had said of the perfection of God, "Who doth not iniquity," or, as Moses had taught them in his song, "all His ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He" Deuteronomy 32:4. "Knoweth no shame," as God saith by Jeremiah, "Thou refusedst to be ashamed" Jeremiah 3:3. They were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush" Jeremiah 6:15; Jeremiah 8:12. Even thus they would not be ashamed of their sins, "that they might be converted and God might heal them" Isaiah 6:10.

I have cut off the nations - God appeals to His judgments on pagan nations, not on any particular nation, as far as we know; but to past history, whether of those, of whose destruction Israel itself had been the instrument, or others. The judgments upon the nations before them were set forth to them, when they were about to enter on their inheritance, as a warning to themselves. "Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things, for in all these have the nations defiled themselves, which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled; therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants. And ye, ye shall keep My statutes and My judgements and shall not commit any of these abominations - And the land shall not spue you out when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations which were before you" (Leviticus 18:24-26, Leviticus 18:28, add Leviticus 20:23). The very possession then of the land was a warning to them; the ruins, which crowned so many of its hilltops , were silent preachers to them; they lived among the memories of God's visitations; if neglected, they were an earnest of future judgments on themselves.

Yet God's judgments are not at one time only. Sennacherib appealed to their own knowledge, "Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly. Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed?" Isaiah 37:11, Isaiah 37:13. Hezekiah owned it as a fact which he knew: "Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their land" Isaiah 37:18. And God owns him as His instrument: "Now I have brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defensed cities into ruinous heaps" Isaiah 37:26 : and, "I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to tread them down as the mire of the streets," and says of him, "It is in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations not a few" . The king of Babylon too he describes as "the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms. that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof" Isaiah 14:16-17. Habakkuk recently described the wide wasting by the Babylonians, and the helplessness of nations before him Habakkuk 1:14-16.

Their towers, corner towers - o, the most carefully fortified parts of their fortified cities, "are desolate; I made their streets waste." The desolation is complete, within as well as without; ruin itself is hardly so desolate as the empty habitations and forsaken streets, once full of life, where

"The echoes and the empty tread

Would sound like voices from the dead."

I said, surely thou wilt fear Me - God speaks of things here, as they are in their own nature. "It could not but be," that in the very presence of the Hand of God, destroying others but as yet sparing them, they must learn to fear Him; they must stand in awe of Him for His judgments on others; they must be in filial fear of Him for His loving longsuffering toward themselves. "Thou 'wilt' receive instruction," corrected and taught through God's correction of others and the lighter judgments on themselves, as Solomon says, "I looked, I set my heart: I saw, I received instruction" Proverbs 24:32. He saith, "receive," making it man's free act. God brings it near, commends it to him, exhorts, entreats, but leaves him the awful power to "receive" or to refuse. God speaks with a wonderful tenderness. "Surely thou 'wilt' stand in awe of Me; thou 'wilt' receive instruction; thou wilt now do what hitherto thou hast refused to do." There was (so to speak) nothing else left for them, in sight of those judgments. He pleads their own interests. The lightning was ready to fall. The prophet had, in vision, seen the enemy within the city. Yet even now God lingers, as it were, "If thou hadst known in this thy day, the things which are for thy peace" Luke 19:42.

So their - (her) dwelling should not be cut off His own holy land which He had given them. A Jew paraphrases , "And He will not cut off their dwellings from the land of the house of My Shechinah" (God's visible presence in glory). Judah, who was before addressed "thou," is now spoken of in the third person, "her;" and this also had wonderful tenderness. It is as though God were musing over her and the blessed fruits of her return to Him; "it shall not be needed to correct her further." "Howsoever I punished them:" literally, "all" (that is, 'all' the offences) "which I visited upon her," as God saith of Himself, "'visiting' the 'sins' of the fathers 'upon' the children" Exodus 20:5; Exodus 34:7; Numbers 14:18, and this is mostly the meaning of the words "visit upon." Amid and not withstanding all the offences which God had already chastised, He, in His love and compassion, still longeth, not utterly to remove them from His presence, if they would but receive instruction "now;" but they would not. "How often," our Lord says, "would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not" Matthew 23:37. "But indeed," "probably, Of a truth" (it is a word strongly affirming what follows) "they rose early, they corrupted all their doings;" God gave them His warnings, awaited the result; they lost no time, they began with morning light; they hasted to rise, burdened themselves, made sure of having the whole day before them, to - seek God as He had sent His prophets, "rising early and sending them?" Jeremiah 7:13, Jeremiah 7:25; Jeremiah 11:7; Jeremiah 26:5; Jeremiah 29:19.

No, nor even simply to do ill, but of set purpose. to do, not this or that corruptly, but "to corrupt all their doings." Jerome: "They with diligence and eagerness rose early, that, with the same haste wherewith they ought to have returned to Me, they might shew forth in deed what they had conceived amiss in their mind." There are as many aggravations of their sin as there are words. The four Hebrew words bespeak eagerness, willfulness, completeness enormity, in sin. They "rose early," themselves deliberately "corrupted," of their own mind made offensive, "all" their "doings," not slight acts, but "deeds," great works done with a high hand .

Therefore wait ye upon - (for) Me God so willeth not to punish, but that all should lay hold of His mercy, that He doth not here even name punishment. Judah had slighted His mercies; He was ready to forgive all they had sinned, if they would "now" receive instruction; they in return set themselves to corrupt "all" their doings. They had wholly forsaken Him. "Therefore" - we should have expected, as elsewhere, "Therefore I will visit all your iniquities upon you." But not so. The chastisement is all veiled; the prophet points only to the mercy beyond. "Therefore wait ye for Me." All the interval of chastisement is summed up in these words; that is, since neither My mercies toward you, nor My chastisement of others, lead you to obey Me, "therefore" the time shall be, when My Providence shall not seem to be over you, nor My presence among you (see Hosea 3:3-5); but then, "wait ye for Me" earnestly, intensely, perseveringly, "until the day, that I rise up to the prey." "The day" is probably in the first instance, the deliverance from Babylon. But the words seem to be purposely enlarged, that they may embrace other judgments of God also.

For the words to "gather the nations, assemble the kingdoms," describe some array of nations against God and His people; gathering themselves for their own end at that time, but, in His purpose, gathering themselves for their own destruction, rather than the mere tranquil reunion of those of different nations in the city of Babylon, when the Medes and Persians came against them. Nor again are they altogether fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem, or any other event until now. For although then a vast number of the dispersed Jews were collected together, and were at that time "broken off" Romans 11:20 and out of covenant with God, they could hardly be called "nations," (which are here and before Zephaniah 5:6 spoken of in contrast with Judah), much less "kingdoms." In its fullest sense the prophecy seems to belong to the same events in the last struggle of Anti-Christ, as at the close of Joel Joe 3:2, Joel 3:9-16 and Zechariah Zech. 14.

With this agrees the largeness of the destruction; "to pour out upon them," in full measure, emptying out so as to overwhelm them, "Mine indignation, even all My fierce anger, for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy" (see Psalm 69:24; Psalm 79:6; Jeremiah 6:11; Jeremiah 10:25; Jeremiah 14:16; Ezekiel 21:31; Revelation 16:1). The outpouring of all God's wrath, the devouring of the whole earth, in the fullest sense of the words, belongs to the end of the world, when He shall say to the wicked, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." In lesser degrees, and less fully, the substance of the prophecy has again and again been fulfilled to the Jewish Church before Christ, at Babylon and under the Maccabees; and to the Christian, as when the Muslims hemmed in Christendom on all sides, and the waves of their conquests on the east and west threatened to meet, overwhelming Christendom. The Church, having sinned, had to "wait" for a while "for God" who by His Providence withdrew Himself, yet at last delivered it.

And since the whole history of the Church lies wrapt up in the Person of the Redeemer, "the day that I rise up to the prey," is especially the Day in which the foundation of His Church was laid, or that in which it shall be completed; the Day whereon He rose again, as the first-fruits, or that Day in which He shall "stand again on the earth" , to judge it; "so coming even as He went up into heaven" Acts 1:11. Then, "the prey" must be, what God vouch-safes to account as His gain, "the prey" which is "taken from the mighty" Isaiah 49:24-25, and "the lawful captivity, the prey of the terrible one," which shall be delivered; even that spoil which the Father bestowed on Him "Who made His soul an offering for sin" Isaiah 53:10, Isaiah 53:12, the goods of the strong man Matthew 12:29 whom He bound, and spoiled us, His lawful goods and captives, since we had "sold" (Romans 7:14, coll; Isaiah 50:1; Isaiah 52:3) ourselves "under sin" to him. Cyril: "Christ lived again having spoiled hell, because "it was not possible" (as it is written) "that He," being by nature Life, "should be holden of death" Acts 2:24.

Here, where spoken of with relation to the Church, "the jealousy" of Almighty God is that love for His people (see the note at Nahum 1:2), which will not endure their ill-treatment by those who (as all anti-Christian power does) make themselves His rivals in the government of the world.