For I will not contend for ever
By afflictive providences; with the humble and contrite, the end
being in a great measure answered by their humiliation and
contrition; when God afflicts his people, it shows that he has a
controversy with them, for their good, and his own glory; and
when these ends are obtained, he will carry it on no longer:
neither will I be always wroth;
as he seems to be in the apprehensions of his people, when he
either hides his face from them, or chastises them with a rod of
affliction: for the spirit should fail before
me;
the spirit of the afflicted, which not being able to bear up any
longer under the affliction, would sink and faint, or be
"overwhelmed", as the word F3 signifies: and the
souls which I have made;
which are of God's immediate creation, and which are also renewed
by his grace, and made new creatures. The proselytes Abraham made
are called the souls he made in Haran, ( Genesis 12:5
) , much more may this be said of the Father of spirits, the
author both of the old and new creation. The Lord knowing the
weakness of the human frame, therefore restrains his hand, or
moderates or removes the affliction; see a like reason in (
Psalms
78:38 ) ( Psalms 103:9
Psalms
103:13 Psalms
103:14 ) , the last days of trouble to God's people, which
will be the time of the slaying of the witnesses, will be such
that if they are not shortened, no flesh can be saved, but for
the elect's sake they will be shortened, ( Matthew
24:22 ) .