Verse 4
VER. 4.
They have spoken words.
They are convinced of their sin, that they have not feared God, they cry out of their misery, what shall a King do to them? But mark what follows? This follows upon it, they were not gained to God ever a whit the more, but they have spoken words, swearing falsly, in making a Covenant.
When they are taken off from their hopes one way, see how they set upon another. Luther upon those words, says: it's an Hebraism; they have anxiously consulted. It's the way of the Hebrews so to express an anxious consultation, and for that he quotes that place in (Isaiah 8:10): Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught &c. So then the meaning would be this:
They have spoken words:] That is, they get together and contrive one with another what they shall do in such a case as this, how they may any way help themselves. As we reade sometimes of the people of God in (Malachi 3:16), those that feared God met one with another and spake together; so these wicked wretches that were thus disappointed of their hopes, they met together, and spake one to another, some such kind of word as these:
Our case is very sad, Oh! who would have thought such things should have befallen us? We are as much crossed of our hopes as ever any men were, we made account we should have over run them, and they would have been but as bread to us, we should have made a prey upon them, and all their estates would have been ours long before this time; Oh but now, those Prophets that told us that God was against us, those Ministers that encouraged people in the name of God, and those people that were different from us, now we see that their words are fulfilled, and what they thought would come, is now come upon us, now it's come to pass what such precise ones among us whose consciences would not submit to our ways & the way of our King said, surely they cannot but look upon us as a most wretched miserable forsaken people, now we are like to lose our houses, estates, honors, and all those delightful things that we hoped to have had, we shall lose all those things that we hoped might have made our lives to have been brave, and prosperous, and merry, and jocund, Oh! what shall we do in such a distressed state as this? We had almost as good die as to endure such a miserable life as we are like to live, to be at the mercy of such men whom we know scorn us and hate us, is there no way to help our selves? Cannot we get some or other to join with us? Cannot we call in no help from any strangers, no matter what we yield to them in. Thus they toss up and down, and wrig up and down, not knowing what in the world to do in their conference.
Or thus; may we not yet possibly make up some peace though we be in this distressed condition? Whatever propositions they shall profer to us, we will rather than fail yield to them all, we may perhaps get some advantage hereafter or be in some means in a better case to revenge our selves than now we are, if they will have us take the COVENANT, & nothing else will satisfie them, we will do it; and when we have taken it, perhaps they may put some of us in places of trust, and so we may privately work about our own ends that way, and drive on our own designs that way better than in any hostile way, and if together with their Covenant they will have Oaths, we will take them too, and if we cannot agree to their Oaths or Covenant hereafter we will say, we were forced to it, and therefore they do not bind us. Some such kind of communication it's like they had. And could you hear the communication of our adversaries when they get together in those straights that God has brought them into, it's like you would hear some such kind of stuff as this is, they spake these words one to another.