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Son_1:6 Look not upon me, because I [am] black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; [but] mine own vineyard have I not kept.
Ver. 6. Look not upon me, because I am black.] "Look not upon me," viz., with a lofty look, with a coy countenance; fix not your eyes upon mine infirmities and miseries so as to disdain me, or to disesteem me for them. Blackish I am, I confess, tanned, and discoloured. The old Latin translation renders it "brown" - lovely brown we call it; belle brunette, the French; others "somewhat black," - q.d., My blackness is not so much as you may think for; judge not, therefore, according to the appearance; stumble not at my seeming deformities. A faithful man may fall far, but the seed abideth in him; the new nature cannot be lost; the oil of God’s Spirit, wherewith he is anointed, setteth the colours, which are of his own tempering, so sure on, and maketh them cleave so fast together, that it is impossible he should ever return to his own hue, to be coal black, as before. Howbeit he is subject to much affliction, anguish, and distress, as it were to the scorching of the sun; and that, with many that have not senses exercised to discern good and evil, renders him despicable; but that should not be. Of Queen Elizabeth it is said that she hated, no less than did Mithridates, such as maliciously persecuted virtue forsaken of fortune; {a} as when a deer is shot, the rest of the herd push him out of their company.
Because the sun hath looked upon me.] By "sun" here some have understood the Sun of righteousness, whom, when the Church looks intently upon, she is bedazzled, and sees her own nothingness, in comparison to his incomparable brightness. Others by "sun" here will have original sin to be meant; which, indeed, hath brought the blackness of darkness upon the spirit of our minds, and bored out the eye of our understandings. The same original depravity they understand by the following words, "Sons of the same mother"; and by being "kindled with wrath," they understand sin increasing and raging, as it were; and by appointing the Church to "keep other vineyards," they understand the committing of the works of the flesh and the deeds of darkness with which she was, as it were, holden, so that she could do nothing else till the Lord had loosed her out of these chains. But they do best that by "sun" in this place understand the heat of persecution, and the parching of oppression, according to Mat_13:6; Mat_13:21 Lam_1:6; Lam_1:13-14, &c. What bonfires were here made in Queen Mary’s days, burning the dear saints of God to a black coal, lighting them up for tapers in a dark night, as they did in Nero’s days! After John Huss was burnt, his adversaries got his heart, which was left untouched by the fire, and beat it with their staves. The story of the Maccabees’ persecutions, prophesied of in Dan_11:32-35, and recorded in Heb_11:35 to the end, is exceeding lamentable. Opposition is - as Calvin wrote to the French king - evangelii genius, and ecclesia est haeres crucis, saith Luther. {b} The Church hath its cross for its inheritance. "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus," if they be set upon it so to do, "shall suffer persecution"; there is no avoiding it. {2Ti_3:12} When Ignatius came to the wild beasts, Now, saith he, I begin to be a Christian, and not till now. That Christian, saith Mr Bradford, hath not yet learned his A B C in Christianity that hath not learned the lesson of the cross, {c} &c. Omnis Christianus crucianus. {d} This the worldling cannot away with; and although he "make a fair show in the flesh," or åõðñïóùðçóáé , "set a good face" on it, as the word signifies, as if he had set his face toward Sion, yet when it comes to a matter of suffering, he stumbles at the cross, and falls backwards. He will not "suffer persecution for the cross of Christ." {Gal_6:12} He looks at the Church with a vulture’s eye, as though he would behold nothing in her but corruption and carrion. He makes an ill construction of her infirmities, and will not stick to say, if he have a mind to shake her off, that she is black and despicable, that she provides but poorly for her followers, that the great ones favour her as little as the lords of the Philistines did David, &c. Cicero veram religionem splendore imperii, gravitate nominis Romani, maiorum institutis, et Fortunae successibus metitur, {e} Cicero’s marks of the true religion were the largeness of the Roman empire, their spreading fame, their ancestors’ ordinances, and their singular success. The Papists have the like arguments for proof of their Church. But what saith Luther? Ego non habeo aliud contra Papae regnum robustius argumentum, quam quod sine cruce regnat: {f} I have no stronger argument against the Pope’s kingdom than this, that he reigns without the cross.
My mother’s children were angry with me,] i.e., Worldly men, that are of the same human race that I am; these fretted at me, as Moab did at Israel, because they were of a different religion, {Num_22:3-4} or as Tobiah and his complices did at Nehemiah and his Jews. {Neh_6:1} It was quarrel enough to Jerusalem that it would not be miserable. Hypocrites and heretics especially are here understood, as some conceive, such as pretend to be children of the Church, and her greatest friends as the Donatists would be the only Christians, and after them the Rogatian heretics called themselves the only catholics. So did the Arians, and so do the Papists, whose anger against the true children of the Church is far hotter than Nebuchadnezzar’s oven after it had been seven times heated for those three constant worthies. Hypocritis nihil est crudelius impatientius et vindietae cupidius, saith Luther, who had the experience of it, plane sunt serpentes, &c.: There is not a more cruel creature, more impatient and vindictive, than a hypocrite. He is as angry as an asp, as revengeful as a serpent, &c. He is of the serpentine seed, and carries the old "enmity," {Gen_3:15} Cain’s club. {Gen_4:8 Joh_3:12} "Your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name’s sake, said, Let the Lord be glorified." {Isa_66:5} Here was a fair glove drawn upon a foul hand. In nomine Domini incipit omne malum, In the name of God began all wickedness, was grown to a proverb here in times of Popery. {g}
They made me the keeper of the vineyards.] No marvel, therefore, that I am sunburnt, since I have "borne the burden and heat of the day"; {Mat_20:12} it hath been my task to keep out boars, foxes, and other noisome creatures; yea, it hath been my lot to be put upon some servile offices - as those poor vinedressers were {2Ki_25:12} - not so suitable to my place and station assigned me by God; yea, although I am "dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, yet as though living in the world," I have by these impostors and impositors been made to dogmatise ( äïãìáôéæåóèå ) after the commandments and doctrines of men. {Col_2:20; Col_2:22}
But mine own vineyard have I not kept,] q.d., Being burdened with human rights and traditions, and having been the "servant of men," {1Co_7:23} I have departed from the duty that God prescribed unto me. Sane bene, "Full well truly have I rejected or slighted the commandment of God, that I might keep men’s tradition." {Mar_7:9} Thus she shames and shents {hesitates} herself; she blusheth and bleedeth before the Lord for her carelessness in duty. Yea, she tells the world the true reason of her present blackness; somewhat she had to say against others, but most against herself. "After I was made known to myself," {h} said Ephraim - scil., by looking in the glass of God’s law - "I repented." {Jer_31:19} Get thee this law, as a glass to look in, said Mr Bradford, so shalt thou see thy face foul arrayed, and so shamefully saucy, mangy, pocky, and scabbed, that thou canst not but be sorry at the sight thereof. Thus he. {i} Physicians, in some kind of unseemly convulsions, wish their patients to look themselves in a glass, which will help them to strive the more, when they shall see their own deformities. It is fit we should oft reflect and see "every man the plague of his heart," {1Ki_8:38} the "error" {Psa_19:12} of his life, keeping our hearts soft, supple, and soluble; for softness of heart discovers sin, as blots do run abroad and seem biggest in wet paper. When the cockatrice’s egg is crushed, it "breaks out into a viper." {Isa_59:5}
{a} Camden’s Elizabeth.
{b} Luth. in Gen. xxix.
{c} Acts and Mon.
{d} Luth.
{e} Cic. pro. L. Flavio.
{f} Luth., tom. ii.
{g} Acts and Mon.
{h} Postquam ostensum fuerit mihi. - Trem.
{i} Serm of Repent., p. 26.