of him, and profess to remember his works of old at
their solemn feasts: but not in truth, nor in righteous-
hess; not according to the will of God, nor truth of
thins; nor in the integrity of their hearts, but in an
hypocritical way, and not in sincerity and uprightness;
iu word and tongue only, not in deed and in truth;
worshippers of God they were externally, but not in
spirit and truth.
Ver. 2. For they call themselves of the holy city, &c.]
The city Jerusalem, so called because the temple, the
place of divine worship, was in it, the residence of the
holy One of Israel: they valued themselves, not only
upon their being of the family of Jacob, and of the
tribe of Judah, but that they were inhabitants of
rusalem, the holy city; as many now call themselves
fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of
God, when they are strangers both to God and his
people in the experimental knowledge of things: and
stay themselves upon the God of Israel; professed to
trust in the Lord, and lean upon him, and rely upon
his power and providence, his mercy and goodness,
and expect all needful things from him, renouncing
all contidence in the creature; and yet at the same
time acted an hypocritical part, their faith was
reigned: see Mic. iii. 11. The Lord of hosts is his
name; whom they professed to be their God and Fa-
ther, their Lord and Husband, their Saydour and Re-
deemer; who has all power in heaven and in earth,
and does according to his will in both worlds, having
the hosts of angels and armies of men at his command,
and therefore so called.
Vet. 3. I have declared the former things from the
beginning, &c.] From the time of their first ancestors,
from the time of Abraham their father, to whom was
declared what should befall his posterity; that they
should sojourn in Egypt, be afflicted there, and come
out from thence with great substance; that they
be brought into the land of Canaan, and
the inhabitants of it being driven out before them,
Gen. xv. 13--18. And they went firth out of my
mouth, and I shewed them; they were told to Abraham
by word of mouth; they were shewn to him in pro-
F~hecy: I did them suddenly, and they 'came to pass;
r very quickly these things began to take place, even
in Abraham's time; for his seed being a stranger in a
land not theirs, and afflicted near four hundred years,
must be reckoned from the birth of Isaac; and all
which exactly came to pass as was foretold; not one
thing which the Lord had spoken of failed; all was
punctually fulfilled, Josh. xxi. 45.
Vet. 4. Because I knew that thou art obstinate, &c.]
Or hard[s}, hard-hearted, an obdurate and rebellious
people, contradicting and gainsaying: and thy neck is
as an iron sinew; stiff-necked, inflexible, not compliant
with the will of God, and his commands; unwilling
to admit his yoke, and bear it: and thy brow brass;
impudent, not ashamed of sin, nor blushing at it, re-
fusing to receive correction for it, having a whore's
forehead. This the Lord knew and foreknew, and
therefore declared before-hand what would come to
pass unto them; who otherwise would have had the
assurance to have ascribed them to themselves, or their
idols, and not to him.
Ver. 5. I have even from the beginning declared it to
thee, &c.] From the beginning of their being a people,
even before they were formed into a body politic; yea,
from the original of them, from the time of Abraham
their ancestor, as before observed: before it came to
I shewed it thee; some hundreds of years before;
first to Abraham, then to Isaac, then to Jacob, then
to Joseph, and then to Moses, and by him to the
children of Israel: lest thou shouldest salt, mine idol
hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten
image, hath commanded them; or my libation or fusion
of wine, oil, or blood, by which, as by other things,
they made conjectures of what was to come to pass;
so Gussetins{b} interprets the last word; lest they should
ascribe their deliverance out of Egypt to the idols
they made and worshipped, being a people prone to
idolatry; as they did when they made a golden calf,
and danced about it, Exod. xxxii. 4. This the Lord
knew before-hand, and therefore to prevent this stu-,
pidity, or convince them of it, he foretold what should
come to pass, which their idols were never able to do..
Vet. 6. Thou hast heard, see all this: and will ye not
declare it ? &c.] You have heard of all these things,,
how they were foretold before they were; how they
came to pass exactly as they were predicted; now
look over these prophecies, and compare them with
the events; see the exact completion of them; and
when you have so done, can you be so stouthearted
and impudent as to deny them, or not own and confess
them ? I have shewed thee new things from this time,
even hidden things, and thou didst not know them; meanø
ing the destruction of the Babylonish empire, and the
deliverance of the Jews by Cyrus, pr6phesied just now
in the preceding chapters; things not yet come to
pass, newly revealed, which were hidden in the breast
of God, and unknown to them until prophesied of;
and which were typical of redemption by the incar-
nate Son of God, whose incarnation, and salvation by
him, were new, unheard-of, and wonderful things;
and of the new state of things under the Gospel dis-
pensation, when all things shall become new; the
doctrines and ordinances of which are new; the whole
Gospel is a hidden mystery, and unknown to men
till revealed and made known by the spirit of God.
Ver. 7. They are created now, and not from the be-
ginning, &c.] Not that they were now done or brought
into being, for as yet Cyrus was not born; though the
raising of him up, and holding his right hand, and his
executing the counsel of God, are spoken of as if they
were already done, because of the certainty of them,
ch. xlv. 1, 12. and xlvi. 11. Aben Ezra interprets
created by decreed; though these were not now de-
creed by God; for no new decrees are made by him;
but those which were made by him of old were now
revealed and made manifest by prophecy, which is the
sense of the phrase; so Kimchi observes, "the time
"when they went out of the mouth of God is the
"time of their creation." Thus in like manner the
incarnation of Christ, his sufferings and death, and

{a} \^hta hvq yk\^ quod durus tu es, Pagninus, Montanus;
te durum esse, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Vitringa.
{b} Ebr. Comment. p. 517.