13:14-31 When we come together to worship God, we must do it, not only by prayer and praise, but by the reading and hearing of the word of God. The bare reading of the Scriptures in public assemblies is not enough; they should be expounded, and the people exhorted out of them. This is helping people in doing that which is necessary to make the word profitable, to apply it to themselves. Every thing is touched upon in this sermon, which might best prevail with Jews to receive and embrace Christ as the promised Messiah. And every view, however short or faint, of the Lord's dealings with his church, reminds us of his mercy and long-suffering, and of man's ingratitude and perverseness. Paul passes from David to the Son of David, and shows that this Jesus is his promised Seed; a Saviour to do that for them, which the judges of old could not do, to save them from their sins, their worst enemies. When the apostles preached Christ as the Saviour, they were so far from concealing his death, that they always preached Christ crucified. Our complete separation from sin, is represented by our being buried with Christ. But he rose again from the dead, and saw no corruption: this was the great truth to be preached.

Verse 18. - For about for about, A.V. Suffered he their manners (ἐτροποφόρησεν). This word τροποφορέω, to bear or put up with any one's (perverse) manners, is found nowhere else in the New Testament. But in the Cod. Alex. of the LXX. it is the rendering of Deuteronomy 1:31, instead of ἐτροφόρησεν he bare or carried, as a nursing father carries his child, which is the read of the Cod. Vat. and of the margin of the R.T. here. The Hebrew נָשָׂא is capable of either sense. From this quotation from Deuteronomy it is conjectured that the Par-ashah on this occasion was from Deuteronomy 1, and if the ὕψωσεν of ver. 17 is taken from Isaiah 1, that would seem to have been the Haphtorah, and it is curious that Deuteronomy 1. and Isaiah 1. are read in the synagogues now on the same sabbath (but see note on ver. 17). Forty years is invariably the time assigned to the dwelling in the wilderness (Exodus 16:35; Numbers 14:33, 34; Numbers 32:13; Numbers 33:38; Deuteronomy 1:3; Psalm 95:10, etc.).

And about the time of forty years,.... From their coming out of Egypt, to their entrance into the land of Canaan:

suffered he their manners in the wilderness; which were very perverse and provoking; as their murmuring for water, their rebellion against Moses and Aaron, their idolatry and the ill report brought on the good land by their spies; and yet the Lord fed them, and led them, and kept them as the apple of his eye: some think the true reading is "he bore", or "fed them", as a nurse bears and feeds her children; and so the Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions render it, "he nourished them"; rained manna, and gave them quails from heaven, and furnished a table for them in the wilderness: and indeed, though there were instances of God's patience and forbearance with them, yet certain it is, that as he was tempted and proved by them, so he was grieved with them during the forty years in the wilderness; and often let fall his vengeance upon them, by cutting off great numbers of them; and even the carcasses of all that generation that came out of Egypt fell in the wilderness; nor did any of them enter into the land of Cannan, but Joshua and Caleb.

18-22. forty years suffered he their manners—rather, according to what appears the true reading, "cherished he them" (as a nurse the infant in her bosom).

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