Incline your ear, and come unto me
The exhortations are repeated, to show the importance of them,
how welcome these persons were to the Lord, and to his house, and
his earnest and tender care and concern for them: hear, and
your soul shall live;
or, "that your soul may live F6"; spiritually and eternally.
There must be life before hearing; men must be made alive before
they can come to Christ spiritually, or hear his word so as to
have a spiritual understanding of it, or savingly believe it; but
the meaning is, that by coming and hearing the word of the Lord,
they should have something to live upon, good, solid, substantial
food; and that they should live comfortably and plentifully, and
that for ever. It was reckoned a great absurdity in Sunlungus, a
Chinese philosopher, who asserted F7 that a man had three
ears, one different from the two that are seen; it is true in a
spiritual sense. And I will make an everlasting covenant
with you;
which is to be understood not of the covenant of works, nor of
the covenant of circumcision, nor of the Sinai covenant; but of
the covenant of grace, which is an "everlasting one"; it is from
everlasting, being founded in the everlasting love of God, is
according to his eternal purposes; Christ is the Mediator of it,
who as such was set up from everlasting, and the promises and
blessings of it were so early put into his hands; and it will
continue to everlasting, sure, firm, unalterable, and immovable.
This, properly speaking, was made with Christ from all eternity,
and his people in him; it is made manifest to them at conversion,
when they are shown it, and their interest in it; when God makes
himself known to them as their covenant God, and Christ as the
Mediator of it is revealed to them; when the Lord puts his Spirit
into them, and makes them partakers of the grace of it; shows
them their interest in the blessings of it, and opens and applies
the promises of it unto them; and these are made manifest in the
ministration of the Gospel, and in the administration of
ordinances: even "the sure mercies of David"; that is, the
Messiah, the son of David, and his antitype, whence he is often
called by his name, ( Ezekiel
34:23 Ezekiel
34:24 ) ( Ezekiel
37:24 Ezekiel
37:25 ) ( Hosea 3:5 ) , and so Aben
Ezra, Kimchi, and others F8, interpret it. The blessings of the
covenant are called "mercies", because they spring from the mercy
of God, as redemption, pardon of sin, regeneration, salvation,
and eternal life; and they are the mercies of David, or of
Christ, for the promises of them were made to him, and the things
themselves put into his hands, and are ratified and confirmed by
his blood, and through him come to his people: and these are
"sure", firm, and steadfast, through the faithfulness and
holiness of God, who has given them to Christ; through being in a
covenant ordered in all things and sure; and also being in the
hands of Christ, in whom the promises are yea and amen, and the
blessings sure to all the seed; see ( Acts 13:34 ) , (See
Gill on Acts
13:34).
F6 (yxtw) "ut vivat", Junius & Tremellius, Vitringa.
F7 Martin. Hist. Sinic. l. 4. p. 170.
F8 Abarbinel, Mashmiah Jeshuah, fol. 26, 1.