Nevertheless they will be his servants, that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.”
Parallel Translations
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Nevertheless they will be his servants, that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.”
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Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.
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Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know My service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.'
Cross-references (6)
Passages linked to 2 Chronicles 12:8 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Deuteronomy 28:47-48 Because you didn’t serve Yahweh your God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things; therefore you will serve your enemies whom Yahweh sends against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in lack of all things. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.
- Isaiah 26:13 Yahweh our God, other lords besides you have had dominion over us, but we will only acknowledge your name.
- Judges 3:1 Now these are the nations which Yahweh left, to test Israel by them, even as many as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
- Jeremiah 10:24 Yahweh, correct me, but gently; not in your anger, lest you reduce me to nothing.
- Hosea 8:10 But although they sold themselves among the nations, I will now gather them; and they begin to waste away because of the oppression of the king of mighty ones.
- Nehemiah 9:36 “Behold, we are servants today, and as for the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its good, behold, we are servants in it.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (13 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain He showeth that God’s punishments are not to destroy…
He showeth that God’s punishments are not to destroy his utterly, but to chastise them, to bring them to the knowledge of themselves, and to know how much better it is to serve God than tyrants.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 2Ch 12:8 Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that…
2Ch 12:8 Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.
Ver. 8. That they may know my service.] Know by woeful experience, the worth of my work and wages by the want thereof, and the contrary miseries. They that serve not God with cheerfulness "in the abundance of all things, shall serve their enemies" another while "in want of all." {Deu 28:47-48}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain That they may experimentally know and feel the difference…
That they may experimentally know and feel the difference between my yoke and the yoke of a foreign and idolatrous prince, and what mischief they have done to themselves by forsaking me and my service.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Nevertheless, they shall be his servants,.... tributaries to the…
Nevertheless, they shall be his servants,.... tributaries to the king of Egypt:
that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries; the difference between them, how easy the one, which they might perform without taxes and tributes, and how hard and heavy the other, through the exactions and exorbitant demands of those to whom they became subjects.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain May know - That they may experimentally know the…
May know - That they may experimentally know the difference between my yoke and the yoke of a foreign and idolatrous prince.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 8. They shall be his servants] They shall…
Verse 8. They shall be his servants] They shall be preserved, and serve their enemies, that they may see the difference between the service of God and that of man. While they were pious, they found the service of the Lord to be perfect freedom; when they forsook the Lord, they found the fruit to be perfect bondage. A sinful life is both expensive and painful.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain 2Ch 12:8. They shall be his servants — That…
2Ch 12:8. They shall be his servants — That is, they shall be much at his mercy, and put under contribution by him, and some of them taken prisoners, and held in captivity by him: that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms, &c. — That they may experimentally know the difference between my yoke, and the yoke of a foreign and idolatrous prince. The more God’s service is compared with other services, the more reasonable and easy it will appear. And, whatever difficulties or hardships we may imagine there are in the way of obedience, it is better, a thousand times, to go through them, than to expose ourselves to the punishment of disobedience. Are the laws of temperance thought hard? The effects of intemperance will be much harder. The service of virtue is perfect liberty, the service of vice perfect slavery.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain That they may know my service, and the service…
That they may know my service, and the service of the kingdom - i. e., that they may contrast the light burthen of the theocracy with the heavy yoke of a foreign monarch.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 8. that they may know my service, etc.] That…
8. that they may know my service, etc.] That they may learn the difference between my service and other service.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (8) Nevertheless they shall be.—For they shall become servants…
(8) Nevertheless they shall be.—For they shall become servants (i.e., tributaries) to him; scil., for a while.
That they may know (or, discern) my service, and the service of the kingdoms.—That they may learn by experience the difference between the easy yoke of their God, and the heavy burden of foreign tyranny, which was entailed upon them by deserting Him.
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Kingdoms of the countries.—See 1Ch_29:30.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain The genius of this verse, nevertheless, will quite admit…
The genius of this verse, nevertheless, will quite admit of the Authorized Version rendering, proposed to be superseded in the last verse. This says life shall be spared, but still severe moral reckoning (that of servitude in a sense and tributariness) shall be taken with the transgressors and forsakers of the Lord! The contrast of God"s service and that of men and the world again touchingly recalls the words of Christ. (Mat_11:28-30)
Servitude and service.
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shall be servants to him for a short time, that they may discern my service and the service of the kingdoms of the lands; i.e. that they may see that my rule is not so oppressive as that of foreign kings" (Keil). God would let Rehoboam and the princes of Judah be for a time subject to Shishak be in his power, be at his mercy, be compelled to go through the miserable humiliation of buying him off that he might be able to contrast the honourable and happy service which he had known for three (2Ch_11:17) with the unendurable subjection to which he was now reduced. He should feel and know that the way of transgressors is hard; that between the bonds of the Lord and the yoke of the stranger there was all the difference between blessedness and misery, between a holy service and a degrading servitude.
I THE DEGRADING SERVITUDE. "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants or, "slaves" ye are to whom ye obey?" "Ye were the servants slaves of sin; Being made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness". (Rom_6:16-18)
1. Sin is a foreign power. It is a stranger; it is an interloper; it has steppedin between ourselves and God; it is like the Egyptian forces that came up against Judah and Jerusalem, and sought to bring the people of God into captivity. Sin is our natural enemy, whom we have greatest reason to dread.
2. Sin proves a hard master, and forces to a cruel bondage. It is theultimate source of poverty, and that is a hard master; it leads to vice, and that holds its victims in the most degrading thraldom; it throws around its subjects the coils of procrastination, and these hold the spirit in an evil circle from which it tries vainly to escape; it takes men further and further away from God, and leads them down to sources of satisfaction that are sure to fail and to end in disappointment and heart-ache; it is a sorry servitude in which to suffer; it is in very striking contrast to
II THE HOLY SERVICE OF THE SAVIOUR. TO recognize the claims of our Divine Father and Redeemer, to yield ourselves in glad self-surrender to him, to spend our days and powers in his service what is this?
1. It is the one right thing to do. It is to be fulfilling the greatest and strongest of all obligations.
2. It is the path of true liberty. Every servant of a Divine Saviour can say and sing
In a service which thy love appoints There are no bonds for me, A life of self-renouncing love Is a life of liberty.
1. It is the secret and the source of lasting peace and of abiding joy.
2. It is the commencement of that life which is life indeed," which is the beginning and foretaste of eternal life the life which is of God, for God, with God, in God. C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Nevertheless they shall be his servants.
2Ch_12:8
Nevertheless they shall be his servants.
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Servitude or service-which
?--
I. That there are some who have already chosen the service of the kingdoms of the countries. Some have chosen--
1. To be the slaves of open sin.
2. To be the votaries of money-making.
3. To be lovers of fashion, lovers of society, admirers of the world.
4. To become the devotees of culture.
5. To be the seekers of self-righteousness.
II. Some seem to be pining to give up the service of God, and to go to the service of the kingdoms. Some want to change--
1. Out of sheer love of change.
2. Because of the outward aspect of the new thing.
3. Because of their loss of joy in the service of God.
4. Because of the flagging of others.
5. Because religion now has brought them to a point where it entails some extra self-sacrifice.
III. There is a great contrast between the service of God and any other service. The service of God is delightful. Remember, young man, if you are about to engage in the service of God--
1. There is nothing demanded of you that will harm you.
2. There is nothing denied you, in the service of God, that would be a blessing to you.
3. That in the service of God strength will always be given according to your day.
4. That there is no threat made to hang upon it.
5. All the while that you are a servant of God, you have a sweet peace in reflecting upon what you have done.
6. There is, above all this, a hope of the eternal reward which is so soon to come. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Comparative service
It is an old failing of human nature not to know when it is well off, and the text furnishes an illustration of that failing. There is a great lesson here for to-day. Adam was discontented with Paradise, Israel with Canaan, and many now are despising the goodly inheritance we have in Christ. We are fond of comparing the service of God with alternative services, to the disparagement of the former.
I. Compare the faith of Christ with the faith of scepticism. I say the faith of scepticism, for the sceptic has a creed just as truly as the Christian believer has. Many are greatly dissatisfied with the Christian revelation; they are anxious to set it aside, to find substitutes for it. The proverb says: The cow in the meadow, knee-deep in clover, often looks over the hedge and longs for the common. So, many are now looking over the hedge of revelation, and longing for the bare wastes and the wild growths of infidelity.
1. If we renounce revelation, shall we be better off intellectually? It must be remembered that if revelation is rejected, all the dark problems of nature, all the perplexing enigmas of human life, will still be left. Revelation has not created the confusions, the cruelties, the calamities of the world. You will not make a black sky blue by smashing the weather-glass; you will not turn cruel winter into glorious summer by throwing out the thermometer; neither will you get rid of sorrow and mystery and death by rejecting the Bible. Can you, having rejected revelation, give that dark world any clearer or happier interpretation?
2. If we renounce revelation, shall we be better off as pertaining to the conscience? Take away the Bible, and conscience is left--an accusing conscience is left. To what terrible beliefs and deeds an accusing conscience drives men the history of paganism clearly shows. A guilty conscience built the wicker-basket of Druidism; it doomed the children to pass through the fire to Molech. Yes, you reply, but it is impossible for these tragedies of superstition to be repeated; Druidism, for instance, can never come back again. Who can say what may, or may not, come back again? Theosophy teaches that through endless reincarnations we must be purged from our sins. Our sorrows in this life are the results of the sins and errors of past incarnations, and before us is a dreary vista of fresh incarnations in which we are again to sin and suffer. It is terrible to think of the monstrous intellectual and religious systems which must arise when men no longer know the mercy of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The guilty conscience will not go to sleep; it will have blood and tears.
3. If we renounce revelation, shall we be better off touching character? If unbelief triumphed, and Christ were rejected as the pattern and perfecter of character, would anything be gained? The whole world of thoughtful men acknowledges the marvellous, the incomparable moral beauty of Jesus Christ.
II. Compare the doctrine of Christ with the doctrine of the world. Thus many now are inclined to prefer the worldly life to the Christian life. It seems so much more free. Men feel that the Christian law retards their youth, cramps and foils their appetites and curiosities. But is this so? The doctrine of Jesus is hard, men say. But how much harder, exclaims Tolstoy, is the doctrine of the world! Take its doctrine of glory. Cruel doctrine! What blood, groans, tears, it implies! And not only on the battlefield is the doctrine of glory seen to be merciless; it works woe in a thousand subtle ways in all spheres of human life and action. Take its doctrine of gain. How that principle of selfishness, which is the doctrine of the world, grinds men to powder! Take its doctrine of fashion. What a terrible price the world exacts for its empty shows, its vain titles, its purple and gold! Take its doctrine of pleasure. Millions have been ruined by following in its paths of roses and music and beauty. How cruel! Ah! the world has far more martyrs than the Church has. And what is the doctrine of Jesus that men call hard? Instead of the doctrine of glory, He teaches the doctrine of humility and service; for the doctrine of gain, the doctrine of equity and love; for the doctrine of fashion, the doctrine of simplicity and truth; for the doctrine of pleasure, the doctrine of purity and peace. Well may Jesus dare to say, My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
III. Compare the law of Christ with the service of self-will. A man says: I will not be restrained; I will determine my own path, choose my own pleasures, shape my own character, be the architect of my own fortune. It shall throughout be according to my own preferences and determinations. Is, then, the self-willed man happy? Is he happy as he sets himself against nature? You tell your boy not to play with fire; but he is self-willed, and takes the opportunity to sport with matches and gunpowder, and probably repents ever after. It does not pay to set up our will against the grand ordinances of nature. Is the self-willed man happy as he opposes himself to the laws and institutions of society? To outrage the judgments, the feelings, the rights of society is to be keenly miserable. Is the self-willed man happy within himself? You say proudly, I am my own master. Could you have a worse? It is a terrible thing to setup our will against the Divine will as that will is expressed in the physical universe, in society, or as it seeks to fulfil itself in our personal nature and life. Self-will is captivity and ruin: loving obedience to the will of God in Christ, with its self-control and self-denial, is health and peace. To be His slaves is to be kings. Surrender yourselves to Him, and prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. The service of the kingdoms of the countries. The Jews often heard delightful things about this foreign service. They remembered the fish which they did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. Nothing to do in Egypt but to regale themselves with piquant viands, and to stroll under the palms on the banks of the Nile. They heard of the attractions of Babylon, of its hanging gardens, its luxuries and delights. And the ambassadors of Sennacherib painted for them in glowing colours the life of Assyria: A land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. No more work, no more worry, no more worship. Getting away from Jerusalem, they were to get away from temple and law, from priest and prophet, and to taste the pleasures of an unfettered life. But did they find captivity so desirable? You who are tempted to despise Gods Word, beware. Young men, weary of the order and restraint of a godly home, and ever hankering after a looser life, be wise, and stay thankfully where you are. Discontented Englishmen, ever protesting against narrowness and austerity, against Protestantism, Puritanism, and bumbledom, and ever looking with longing eyes to laxer civilisations, be content; subdue your murmurings and wantonness, lest God spoil you of your rich inheritance. Discontented Christians, ever casting lingering glances at the life you have left, be content; see to it that there is in you no evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. (W. L. Watkinson.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain 2 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
CONTRASTED SERVICES
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2Ch 12:8.
Rehoboam was a self-willed, godless king who, like some other kings, learned nothing by experience. His kingdom was nearly wrecked at the very beginning of his reign, and was saved much more by the folly of his rival than by his own wisdom. Jeroboam’s religious revolution drove all the worshippers of God among the northern kingdom into flight. They might have endured the separate monarchy, but they could not endure the separate Temple. So all priests and Levites in Israel, and all the adherents of the ancestral worship in the Temple at Jerusalem, withdrew to the southern kingdom and added much to its strength.
Rehoboam’s narrow escape taught him neither moderation nor devotion, his new strength turned his head. He forsook the law of the Lord. The dreary series, so often illustrated in the history of Israel, came into operation. Prosperity produced irreligion; irreligion brought chastisement; chastisement brought repentance; repentance brought the removal of the invader-and then, like a spring released, back went king and nation to their old sin.
So here-Rehoboam’s sins take visible form in Sheshak’s army. He has sown the dragon’s teeth and they spring up armed men. Shemaiah the prophet, the first of the long series of noble men who curbed the violence of Jewish monarchs, points the lesson of invasion in plain, blunt words: ‘Ye have forsaken Me.’ Then follow penitence and confession-and the promise that Jerusalem shall not be destroyed, but at the same time they are to be left as vassals and tributaries of Egypt-an anomalous position for them-and the reason is given in these words of our text.
I. The contrasted Masters.
Judah was too small to be independent of the powerful warlike states to its north and south, unless miraculously guarded and preserved. So it must either keep near God, and therefore free and safe from invasion, or else, departing from God and following its own ways, fall under alien dominion. Its experience was a type of that of universal humanity. Man is not independent. His mass is not enough for him to do without a central orb round which he may revolve. He has a choice of the form of service and the master that he will choose, but one or other must dominate his life and sway his motions. ‘Ye cannot serve God and Mammon’; ye must serve God or Mammon. The solemn choice is presented to every man, but the misery of many lives is that they drift along, making their election unawares, and infallibly choosing the worse by the very act of lazily or weakly allowing accident to determine their lives. Not consciously and strongly to will the right, not resolutely and with coercion of the vagrant self to will to take God for our aim, is to choose the low, the wrong. Perhaps none, or very few of us, would deliberately say ‘I choose Mammon, having carefully compared the claims of the opposite systems of life that solicit me, and with open-eyed scrutiny measured their courses, their goods and their ends.’ But how many of us there are who have in effect made that choice, and never have given one moment’s clear, patient examination of the grounds of our choice! The policy of drift is unworthy of a man and is sure to end in ruin.
It is not for me to attempt here to draw out the contrast between man’s chief end and all other rival claimants of our lives. Each man must do that for himself, and I venture to assert that the more thoroughly the process of comparison is carried out, and the more complete the analysis not only of the rival claims and gifts, but of our capacities and needs, the more sun-clear will be the truth of the old, well-worn answer: ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.’ The old woman by her solitary fireside who has learned that and practises it, has chosen the better part which will last when many shining careers have sunk into darkness, and many will-o’-the-wisps, which have been pursued with immense acclamations, have danced away into the bog, and many a man who has been envied and admired has had to sum up his successful career in the sad words, ‘I have played the fool and erred exceedingly.’ I cannot pretend to conduct the investigation for you, but I can press on every one who does not wish to let accidents mould him, at least to recognise that there is a choice to be made, and to make it deliberately and with eyes open to the facts of the case. It is a shabby way of ruining yourself to do it for want of thought. The rabble of competitors of God catch more souls by accident than of set purpose. Most men are godless because they have never fairly faced the question: what does my soul require in order to reach its highest blessedness and its noblest energy?
II. The contrasted experience of the servants.
Judah learned that the yoke of obedience to God’s law was a world lighter than the grinding oppression of the Egyptian invader.
God’s service is freedom; the world’s is slavery.
Liberty is unrestrained power to do what we ought. Man must be subject to law. The solemn imperative of duty is omnipresent and sovereign. To do as we like is not freedom, but bondage to self, and that usually our worst self, which means crushing or coercing the better self. The choice is to chain the beast in us or to clip the wings of the angel in us, and he is a fool who conceits himself free because he lets his inferior self have its full swing, and hustles his better self into bondage to clear the course for the other. There is but one deliverance from the sway of self, and it is realised in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. To make self our master inevitably leads to setting beggars on horseback and princes walking. Passion, the ‘flesh’ is terribly apt to usurp the throne within when once God is dethroned. Then indulgence feeds passion, and deeper draughts become necessary in order to produce the same effects, and cravings, once allowed free play, grow in ravenousness, while their pabulum steadily loses its power to satisfy. The experience of the undevout sensualist is but too faithful a type of that of all undevout livers, in the failure of delights to delight and of acquisitions to enrich, and in the bondage, often to nothing more worthy to be obeyed than mere habit, and in the hopeless incapacity to shake off the adamantine chains which they have themselves rivetted on their limbs. There are endless varieties in the forms which the service of self assumes, ranging from gross animalism, naked and unashamed, up to refined and cultured godlessness, but they are one in their inmost character, one in their disabling the spirit from a free choice of its course, one in the limitations which they impose on its aspirations and possibilities, one in the heavy yoke which they lay on their vassals. The true liberty is realised only when for love’s dear sake we joyously serve God, and from the highest motive enrol ourselves in the household of the highest Person, and by the act become ‘no more servants but sons.’ Well may we all pray-
‘Lord! bind me up, and let me lie
A prisoner to my liberty,
If such a state at all can be
As an imprisonment, serving Thee.’
God’s service brings solid good, the world’s is vain and empty.
God’s service brings an approving conscience, a calm heart, strength and gladness. It is in full accord with our best selves. Tranquil joys attend on it. ‘In keeping Thy commandments there is great reward,’ and that not merely bestowed after keeping, but realised and inherent in the very act. On the other side, think of the stings of conscience, the illusions on which those feed who will not eat of the heavenly food, the husks of the swine-trough, the ashes for bread, that self and the world, in all their forms set before men. A pathetic character in modern fiction says, ‘If you make believe very much it is nice.’ It takes a tremendous amount of make-believe to keep up an appetite for the world’s dainties or to find its meats palatable, after a little while. No sin ever yields the fruit it was expected to produce, or if it does it brings something which was not expected, and the bitter tang of the addition spoils the whole. It may be wisely adapted to secure a given end, but that end is only a means to secure the real end, our substantial blessedness, and that is never attained but by one course of life, the life of service of God. We may indeed win a goodly garment, but the plague is in the stuff and, worn, it will burn into the bones like fire. I read somewhere lately of thieves who had stolen a cask of wine, and had their debauch, but they sickened and died. The cask was examined and a huge snake was found dead in it. Its poison had passed into the wine and killed the drinkers. That is how the world serves those who swill its cup. ‘What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?’ The threatening pronounced against Israel’s disobedience enshrines an eternal truth: ‘Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies . . . in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness and in want of all things.’
God’s service has final issues and the world’s service has final issues.
Only fools try to blink the fact that all our doings have consequences. And it augurs no less levity and insensibility to blink the other fact that these consequences show no indications of being broken short off at the end of our earthly life. Men die into another life, as they have ever, dimly and with many foolish accompaniments, believed; and dead, they are the men that they have made themselves while living. Character is eternal, memory is eternal, death puts the stamp of perpetuity on what life has evolved. Nothing human ever dies. The thought is too solemn to be vulgarised by pulpit rhetoric. Enough to say here that these two tremendous alternatives, Life and Death, express some little part of the eternal issues of our fleeting days. Looking fixedly into these two great symbols of the ultimate issues of these contrasted services, we can dimly see, as in the one, a wonder of resplendent glories moving in a sphere ‘as calm as it is bright,’ so, in the other, whirling clouds and jets of vapour as in the crater of a volcano. One shuddering glance over the rim of it should suffice to warn from lingering near, lest the unsteady soil should crumble beneath our feet.
But the true Lord of our lives loves us too well to let us experience all the bitter issues of our foolish rebellion against His authority, and yet He loves us too well not to let us taste something of them that we may ‘know and see that it is an evil thing and a bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God.’ The experiences of the consequences of godless living are in some measure allowed to fall on us by God’s love, lest we should persist in the evil and so bring down on ourselves still more fatal issues. It is mercy that here chastises the evildoer with whips, in hope of not having to chastise him with scorpions. God desires to teach us, by the pains and heartaches of an undevout life, by disappointments, foiled plans, wrecked hopes, inner poverty, the difference between His service and that of ‘the kingdoms of the countries,’ if haply He may not be forced to let the full flood of fatal results overwhelm us. It is best to be drawn to serve Him by the cords of love, but it is possible to have the beginnings of the desire so to serve roused by the far lower motives of weariness and disgust at the world’s wages, and by dread of what these may prove when they are paid in full. Self-interest may sicken a man of serving Mammon, and may be transformed into the self-surrender which makes God’s service possible and blessed. The flight into the city of refuge may be quickened by the fear of the pursuer, whose horse’s hoofs are heard thundering on the road behind the fugitive, and whose spear is all but felt a yard from his back, but once within the shelter of the city wall, gratitude for deliverance will fill his heart and ‘perfect love will cast out fear.’
The king concerning whom our text was spoken had to suffer humiliation by the Egyptian invasion. His sufferings were meant to be educational, and when they in some measure effected their purpose, God curbed the invader and granted some measure of deliverance. So is it with us, if, moved by whatever impulse, we betake ourselves to Jesus to save us from the bitter fruits of our evil lives. The extreme severity of the results of our sins does not fall on penitent, believing spirits, but some do fall. As the Psalmist says: ‘Thou wast a God that forgavest them though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.’ A profligate course of life may be forgiven, but health or fortune is ruined all the same. In brief, the so-called ‘natural’ consequences are not removed, though the sin which caused them is pardoned. Polluted memories, indulged habits, defiled imaginations, are not got rid of, though the sins that inflicted them are forgiven.
Is it not, then, the part of wise men to lay to heart the lessons of experience, and to let what we have learned of the bitter fruit of godless living turn us away from such service, and draw us by merciful chastisement to yield ourselves to God, whom to serve accords with our deepest needs and brings first fruits and pre-libations of blessedness and peace here, and fullness of joy with pleasures for evermore hereafter?
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.