I will arise
This is the resolution which at last, through divine grace, he
came into: he determines to quit the country, and his companions;
he had left his harlots, and his old course of living before, but
was in the same country still; for this a man may do, and yet
remain unregenerate: but he is now for leaving the country
itself, and his new acquaintance; he is now determined to drop
his legal preacher, to be gone out of his fields, and from under
his ministry, and to leave his swine and husks;
and go to my father:
not to his old companions in debauchery and sin; nor to his elder
brother, the Pharisees; he had made trial of both these to his
cost already; nor to his father's servants, but to his father
himself; to which he was moved and encouraged, from his being
ready to perish, from the fulness of bread in his father's house
and from the relation he stood in to him; notwithstanding, all
that had passed, he was his father, and a kind and merciful one:
this shows, that he knew him as his father, having now the Spirit
of adoption sent down into him; and the way unto him, which lies
through Christ the mediator:
and will say unto him, father;
or, "my father", as the Syriac and Persic versions read:
I have sinned against heaven;
by preferring earthly things to heavenly ones; and have sinned
openly in the face of the heavens, who were witnesses against
him; and against God, who dwells in heaven. It was usual with the
Jews to call God, (Mymv) ,
"heaven"; (See Gill on Matthew
21:25). They have this very phrase;
``there is a man, (say F2 they), who sins against earth, and he does not (Mymvb ajh) , "sin against heaven"; against heaven, and he does not sin against earth: but he that speaks with an ill tongue sins against heaven and earth, as it is said, ( Psalms 73:9 ) "they set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through the earth."''And so the sense is, that he had sinned against God himself, and not merely against men, and human laws. All sin is a transgression of the law of God; and the thought of sin being committed against a God of infinite holiness, justice, goodness, grace, and mercy, is cutting to a sensible sinner: and this being the case, this man determined to go to God his Father, and him only, for the pardon of his sin, against whom it was committed. It is added,
and before thee;
for he was now convinced of his omniscience. Sin may be committed
against a man, and not before him, or he not know it; but
whatever is committed against God, is before him, it is in his
sight, he knows it: he is God omniscient, though sinners take no
notice of this perfection of his, but go on in sin, as if it was
not seen, known, and observed by God. But when God works
powerfully and effectually upon the heart of a sinner, he
convinces him of his omniscience, as this man was convinced:
hence he determined to go to God, and acknowledge his sin before
him; and that it was committed before him, and was in his sight;
and that he could not be justified in his sight by any
righteousness of his own; and therefore humbly desires pardon at
his hands. This man's sense of sin and sorrow for it, and
confession of it, appear very right and genuine, which he
determined to express; they appear to be the convictions of the
Spirit of God: it was not a sense of sin, and sorrow for it, as
done before men, but God; and the concern was not so much for the
mischief that comes by sin, as for the evil that was in it; and
this did not drive him to despair, as in the cases of Cain and
Judas, but brought him home to his father; and his confession
appears to be hearty, sincere, and without excuse.