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Now the parable is unfolded and made plain; it shall be with Israel much like as with such a woman, they and she guilty of adultery, both punished with a divorce, both punished long with such afflicted state, both made slaves, kept hardly, and valued meanly, yet in mercy at last pardoned, reaccepted, and preferred, but this after long time of probation: how long we cannot tell, nor list to dispute whether seventy years of Babylon’s captivity, or whether these seventy and the one hundred and thirty years of the ten tribes’ captivity before the two tribes went captives, i.e. two hundred years; or whether till Messiah’s coming, or the general and last conversion of the Jews; long it was to be no doubt.
Without a king; none of their own royal line shall sit on the throne, and rule them, but foreigners, enemies, and they that had conquered them, should be kings over them. So the kingdom ceased, as Hos_1:4.
Without a prince; the conquering kings will not out of the Jews make their chief officers to rule the Jews, but strangers shall be princes and governors over them.
Without a sacrifice; either right, and according to law, (these sacrifices they had long since cast off,) or idolatrous ones, which they would choose.
Without an image; they could carry none of their images with them, and the Assyrians would not let them make new ones.
Without an ephod; no priest as well as no ephod.
Without teraphim; idolatrous images kept in their private houses to worship and consult with, like the Roman lares and penates, household gods. In one word, such should be the state of these captives, they should have nothing of their own, either in kingdom and civil affairs, or in church and religion, but be wholly under the power and arbitrary wills of their conquering enemies.