It was the custom among the Jews when any married that what dowry they brought their husbands was written down in a table; and if afterwards the husband should divorce his wife, except there could be proved some gross and vile thing against the woman, she was to go away with her table, with her dowry; she must not go away empty, or naked. But if there could be proved some notorious villainy which she had committed, then she was sent away naked, without her tables, her dowry. Thus God threatens this people. “She is not My wife.” She shall be sent away without any tables, naked and wholly destitute. Observe--
1. The beginnings of great excellences are sometimes very low and mean. “Set her as in the day that she was born.”
2. God’s mercy is a people’s beauty and glory. When we have any excellency, any beauty upon us, it is God’s mercy that is all our beauty.
3. Though sinners deserve great evils, to be stripped of all comforts, yet God, in patience and clemency continues them a long time.
4. The mercies that God bestows upon a nation, are but common favours, not spiritual graces, they are such ornaments as a people may be stripped of. The great mercies a people have, they may wholly lose.
5. Continuance in sin, and especially the sin of spiritual whoredom, is that which will strip a nation from all their excellences, from all their ornaments and beauty.
6. It is time for a people to plead, when there is danger of desolation.
7. Those who will not be convinced by the Word, God has other means to convince them besides the Word. If pleading and convincing arguments will not do it, well then, stripping naked shall do it.
8. Whatever are the means of stripping a nation, it is really God that does it.
9. It is a grievous judgment for one that is advanced from a low to a high degree to be brought down again.
10. When God has delivered a people out of misery, and bestowed upon them great mercies, it is their duty often to think of the poor condition in which they were, and to use all the means they can that they may not be brought thither again. God loves this, that we should remember and seriously take to heart what once we were. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Spiritual chastity
It is not enough that God should choose any people for Himself, except the people themselves persevere in the obedience of faith; for this is the spiritual chastity which the Lord requires from all His people. But when is a wife, whom God hath bound to Himself by a sacred marriage, said to become wanton? When she falls away from pure and sound faith. Then it follows that the marriage between God and men so long endures as they who have been adopted continue in pure faith. Apostasy in a manner frees God from us, so that He may justly repudiate us. (John Calvin.)
