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For, behold, the Lord cometh forth - See this clause, Amos 4:13; (note). He represents Jehovah as a mighty conqueror, issuing from his pavilion, stepping from mountain to mountain, which rush down and fill the valleys before him; a consuming fire accompanying him, that melts and confounds every hill and dale, and blends all in universal confusion. God is here represented as doing that himself which other conquerors do by the multitude of their hosts; levelling the mountains, filling some of the valleys, and digging for waters in others, and pouring them from hills and dales for the use of the conquering armies, by pipes and aqueducts.
And why is all this mighty movement? Micah 1:5. "For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel."
For, behold, the Lord comth forth - that is, (as we now say,) “is coming forth.” Each day of judgment, and the last also, are ever drawing nigh, noiselessly as the nightfall, but unceasingly. “Out of His Place.” Dionysius: “God is hidden from us, except when He sheweth Himself by His Wisdom or Power of Justice or Grace, as Isaiah saith, ‹Verily, Thou art a God who hidest Thyself‘ Isaiah 45:15.” He seemeth to be absent, when He doth not visibly work either in the heart within, or in judgments without; to the ungodly and unbelieving He is absent, “far above out of their sight” Psalm 10:5, when He does not avenge their scoffs, their sins, their irreverence. Again He seemeth to go forth, when His Power is felt. Dionysius: “Whence it is said, ‹Bow Thy heavens, O Lord, and come down‘ Psalm 144:5; Isaiah 64:1; and the Lord saith of Sodom, ‹I will go down now and see, whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me‘ Genesis 18:21. Or, the Place of the Infinite God is God Himself. For the Infinite sustaineth Itself, nor doth anything out of Itself contain It. God dwelleth also in light unapproachable 1 Timothy 6:16. When then Almighty God doth not manifest Himself, He abideth, as it were, in ‹His own Place.‘ When He manifests His Power or Wisdom or Justice by their effects, He is said ‹to go forth out of His Place,‘ that is, out of His hiddenness. Again, since the Nature of God is Goodness, it is proper and co-natural to Him, to be propitious, have mercy and spare. In this way, the Place of God is His mercy. When then He passeth from the sweetness of pity to the rigor of equity, and, on account of our sins, sheweth Himself severe (which is, as it were, alien from Him) He goeth forth out of His Place.” Jerome: “For He who is gentle and gracious, and whose Nature it is to have mercy, is constrained, on your account, to take the seeming of hardness, which is not His.”
He comes invisibly now, in that it is He who punisheth, through whatever power or will of man He useth; He shews forth His Holiness through the punishment of unholiness. But the words, which are image-language now, shall be most exactly fulfilled in the end, when, in the Person of our Lord, He shall come visibly to judge the world. Jerome, Theoph.: “In the Day of Judgment, Christ ‹shall come down,‘ according to that Nature which He took, ‹from His Place,‘ the highest heavens, and shall cast down the proud things of this world.”
And will come down - Not by change of place, or in Himself, but as felt in the punishment of sin; and tread upon the high places of the earth; to bring down the pride of those (see Amos 4:13; Job 9:8) who “being lifted up in their own conceit and lofty, sinning through pride and proud through sin, were yet created out of earth. For why is earth and ashes proud?” (2 Corinthians 6:16; Revelation 3:20. But He treadeth upon the proud and the evil, in that He casteth them down, despiseth, condemneth them.”
Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord God be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth. Micah 1:2, 3. Mar 262.1
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