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The drift of these words is to comfort God's children in afflictions; and, because when one is sorrowful, weak, taken up and over pressed with grief, we are then unfit and incapable of instruction, the anguish of the suffering destroying our attention, He therefore says, doubling it four times, "Give ye ear," "hear My voice," "hearken ye," and "hear My voice"; wherein He insinuates that the matter He is about to deliver requires attention.

1. The only way to quiet one's heart, and pacify one in all distresses, is to hearken what God says.

(1) Because God's Word will work faith, which does purify the heart, overcome the world, and quench the fiery darts of Satan.

(2) It will teach a man wisdom, whence and why it comes, and that struggling with God is in vain, and that in so doing we shall have the worse.

(3) It will be a means to work patience in the heart.

(4) It will make us go to God and pray, and prayer will bring comfort and ease to the heart ere long.

2. All God's children must be ploughed.

3. God will make a sweet and seasonable end of afflicting His children. He doth correct us for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.

4. When the Lord hath made us plain, and hath filled us with hearts to receive good seed, then is the time of rest.

5. When God hath humbled us by His Word, then He will furnish and arm us with His Word, and enable us with strength that way. Many heaths do meet with streams and floods of water, and yet are nothing the better nor more fruitful; but God's arable, the saints, are ploughed and instructed, as the Psalmist speaks: "Blessed is the man whom Thou correctest, and teachest in Thy law," etc. To have the one without the other is nothing, and does no good, but when correction and teaching go together, then one sees all the good of affliction, and why God sent it upon him.

6. Skill in husbandry is the gift of God; wisdom must come from Him.

7. All God's grain needs threshing and ploughing, and as they need it, so they shall have it.

8. The best grain shall have the sorest trial and hardest pressure. The fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, but are beaten with a staff; neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin, but beaten with a rod; but the wheat must have the wheel go on it. The meaning is an allusion unto that manner of the ancient Jews in treading their wheat, as appears by that precept: "Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox or the ass that treadeth down thy corn" (Deuteronomy 25:4), for then the oxen, drawing a wheel over the wheat, did so bruise it, but not break it.

9. God Almighty knows best, and He appoints what shall be the means, time, and measure of the trials of His children.

10. God, in the chastisements, trials, and afflictions of His elect, hath wonderful wisdom and power beyond our understanding. He knows not only which is the best way to lead us to Heaven, but also He is excellent in working, to bring His counsel to pass. See it in examples. As in Joseph, appointed to be the greatest, save Pharaoh, in all Egypt. So David, after he was anointed king, in a state of honour and all pomp and pleasure, how was he vexed and ploughed with many crosses!

11. Nothing can stay Him from working, to hinder our comfort and deliverance in due time. Why? Because He is "the Lord of hosts," and all the creatures must do what He wills.

( Sibbes, Richard, D. D.)

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KJV: Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.

WEB: Give ear, and hear my voice! Listen, and hear my speech!