23:1-49 A history of the apostacy of God's people from him, and the aggravation thereof. - In this parable, Samaria and Israel bear the name Aholah, her own tabernacle; because the places of worship those kingdoms had, were of their own devising. Jerusalem and Judah bear the name of Aholibah, my tabernacle is in her, because their temple was the place which God himself had chosen, to put his name there. The language and figures are according to those times. Will not such humbling representations of nature keep open perpetual repentance and sorrow in the soul, hiding pride from our eyes, and taking us from self-righteousness? Will it not also prompt the soul to look to God continually for grace, that by his Holy Spirit we may mortify the deeds of the body, and live in holy conversation and godliness?

Verse 43. - The whole verse is obscure, and has been very differently rendered.

(1) The Authorized Version may be paraphrased, "Then said I to her that was worn out with her whoredoms, passed her prime and enfeebled, Will they (the foreign nations) commit whoredoms (enter into alliances) with her? sc. What is there to attract now? And yet the habit is inveterate. She has grown old in her vice, and cannot cease from it."

(2) The Revised Version takes it not as a question, but as a statement: Now said I of her that was old in adulteries, Now will they commit, etc. So, in the main, Keil. The text is probably corrupt, and resists conjectural emendation. In any case the general meaning is clear. The sin is of too long standing to be cured.

Then said I unto her that was old in adulteries,.... That had been an old adulterer or idolater; meaning either Aholah the ten tribes, who from Jeroboam's time had been guilty of idolatry; or Aholibah the two tribes, who had remained longer in their own country, and had been long given to idolatry; or both of them, as some think, the whole body of the people of Israel, who had been addicted to idolatry ever since they came out of Egypt, and so was like an old harlot indeed: now the Lord said "unto her", or "concerning her" (l); in his own mind, after the manner of men. So the Targum,

"I said concerning the congregation of Israel, whose people are old in sins:''

will they now commit whoredoms with her, and she with them? will they commit adultery with such an old harlot? are they not weary of her? and will they not rather loath and despise her? as it is common when such prostitutes grow old; and what pleasure can she take, thus advanced in years, in such impurities? suggesting that alliances and confederacies between the Jews and the nations of the world could not be agreeable on either side, especially to the former; but so it was, and so were their idolatries likewise. The Targum is,

"now she will leave her idols, and return to thy worship; but she returned not.''

(l) "de inveterata illa", Vatablus.

43. Will they, &c.—Is it possible that paramours will desire any longer to commit whoredoms with so worn-out an old adulteress?

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