I. THE GREATER AND MORE INVETERATE THE TRANSGRESSION, THE GREATER WILL BE THE PUNISHMENT. It was not to be supposed that the past judgments of God, however great, were all that he could or would do. He has many ways of bringing transgressors to their senses; and it is impossible to conceive a limit to his power of imposing penalty. His stern, uncompromising attitude to sin has been witnessed to by many an awful judgment and destruction, even where previous calamities might seem to have exhausted his anger or his invention.

II. THE PROMISE OF GOD APPEARS SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE FIRST ANNOUNCEMENTS OF HIS JUDGMENTS. Even in the way in which it is threatened there is encouragement and hope. It will be an awful experience, but God will redeem his people. So in the beginning of the curse our first parents received an anticipatory evangel. The failures of God's people in social and political experiment were the occasion of the most glorious predictions of Messianic times. This shows the real purpose of God's threatenings. They are intended to produce repentance, and yet there is reality enough in them if that repentance be not forthcoming. Fear is appealed to, but freedom of choice is preserved, and spiritual power called into responsible action.

III. THE MERCIFUL POWER OF GOD WILL BE MORE GLORIOUSLY MANIFESTED IN EVERY NEW CALAMITY WHICH HIS PEOPLE BRING UPON THEMSELVES. The captivity of which the prophet speaks will but give occasion for a grand deliverance, in comparison with which the Exodus from Egypt will sink into insignificance. The judgments of God, however great they may appear, are limited with the strictest exactness, and are within his control. There is reason, therefore, to expect his interference whenever the folly or unbelief of his people imperils his cause. He will preserve a people to praise him, and raise up a generation to call him blessed. So with the backslider from gospel privileges and obligations. He whom Christ has washed in his blood will not be suffered wholly to pass into spiritual death. Grander exhibitions of the Divine grace and power will be afforded. The good Shepherd will go over the dark mountains to recover the wanderer. Those who have been entangled again in the yoke of bondage will be redelivered if they but turn with new obedience and faith to their Savior. They will be saved, if" as by fire." - M.

Thus epochs are made; thus new dates are introduced into human history; thus the less is merged in the greater; the little judgment is lost in the great judgment, and the mercy that once appeared to be so great seems to be quite small compared with the greater mercy that has healed and blessed our life. This is the music, and this is the meaning of the passage. What is experience worth? It is worth exactly what we make of it; it will not follow us, and insist upon being looked at and estimated and applied; it is, so to say, either a negative or a positive possession; we can make it either, according to the exercise of our will and inclination. How often we vow not to forget our experience; yet it is stolen from us in the night time, and we awake in the morning empty-handed, empty-minded, beggared to the uttermost point of destitution. We write our vows in water; who can make any impression on the ocean? whole fleets have passed over the sea, not a track is left behind where the waves were sundered; they roll together again, as if with emulous energy they seek to obliterate the transient mark of the intrusive ships. It is so with ourselves. Let no man think he has sounded the whole depth of God's providence in this matter of punishment or of benediction and blessing. History has recorded nothing yet; history is getting its pen ready for the real registration of Divine ministry in human affairs. No judgment has yet befallen the world worth naming, compared with the judgment that may at any moment be revealed. Do not mock God; do not defy Him or tempt Him: what you have had is but the sting of a whip; He could smite you with a thong of scorpions. Rather say, God pity us, God spare us; remember that we are but dust; a wind that cometh for a little time and then passeth away: smite us not in Thine hot anger, O loving One; in wrath remember mercy. We do not know what plagues God could send upon the earth. Be not presumptuous against the Divine government; do not say, God cannot do this, or send down that judgment; if He forbear, it is because His mercy restrains, not because His judgment is impotent. By a natural accommodation of the passage, we may be led into quite another line of thinking and illustration: "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said...but"; and between these words we may put in our own experience, and our own commentaries upon life and destiny. Thus: Behold, the days come that it shall no more be said that we have a Creator, but we have a Redeemer. Men shall not talk about creation. There are some men who are content to talk about one infinitesimal speck of creation; they have not learned the higher philosophy, the fuller wisdom, the riper, vaster law. They are gathering what they can with their hands; they are first the admirers, secondly the devotees, and thirdly the victims of the microscope. They have made an idol of that piece of glazed brass; they who mock the heathen for worshipping ivory and stone and tree and sun, may perhaps be creating a little idol of their own. Behold, the days come when men shall no longer talk about the body, but about the soul. It is time we had done with physiology. If we have not mastered the body, what poor scholars we have been! And yet how far men are from having mastered it in the sense of being able to heal it! Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when men shall no more talk about human deliverance, or deliverance from human extremity, but they shall talk about liberation from diabolic captivity; they shall say they have been loosed from their sins, they have been disimprisoned and set at liberty as to the dominion of their passions and desires and appetences; they shall speak about the higher emancipation, and everywhere men shall be eloquent about the Deliverer who drew the soul from Egyptian and Chaldean tyranny, and gave it liberty and joy in the Holy Ghost. The whole subject of human speech shall be changed; men shall not talk about Egypt, but about Canaan; they shall not talk about the law, but about the higher law; they shall not talk about the outward, but about the inward. Thus dates are introduced into human history. The time will come when men will not speak about being born, but about being "born again." Your birthday was your deathday, — or only the other aspect of it. Date your born-again day from the beginning, the morning of your immortality. Drop the lower theme, seize the higher; dismiss the noise, and entreat the music to take full possession of your nature. Behold, the day is come, saith the Lord, when men shall no longer talk about prayer, but about praise. The old prayer days will be over; they were needful as part of our experience and education, but the time will come when prayer will be lost in praise; the time will come when work will be so easy as to have in it the throb and joy of music; the time will come when it will be easy to live, for life will carry no burden, and know the strain of no care; the days of anxiety will be ended, solicitude will be a forgotten word, and the companionship of God and His angels shall constitute our heaven.

(J. Parker, D. D.)