tatem eormn, et evenire faciam illis (super eos, ad verbum) et super habitatores
JOHN CALVIN men shun and dread the sight; and then when the body gets rigid through cold, and becomes putrid through the heat of the day, the indignity becomes still greater. God then intended to set forth the degradation that awaited Jehoiakim, not that any hurt could be done to him when his body was cast out, and not honored with a burial, but that it would be an evidence of God's vengeance, when a king was thus cast out as an ass or a dog, according to what we have seen elsewhere, ``With the burial of an ass shall he be buried,'' that is, he will be deemed unworthy of common honor; for as it falls to the lot of the lowest of men to find a pit where their bodies lie buried, it was a rare and unusual proof of God's vengeance, that a king should he exposed as a prey to birds and wild beasts. We know what Jehu said of Jezebel,
her be buried, for she is a king's daughter.''
(2 Kings 9:34)
She was worthy to be torn to pieces a hundred times. She had been cast out from a chamber, and the dogs licked her blood; yet an enemy ordered her to be buried --- and why? because she was a king's daughter, or descended from a royal family, (1
Kings 21:23:) then, he said, let her be buried.
We now then understand the meaning of the Prophet, or rather of the Holy Spirit, that it would be a remarkable proof of God's vengeance, when the body of King
Jehoialdm should be exposed at night to the cold, and in the day to the heat. This has also happened sometimes to the saints, as we have before said; but it was a temporal punishment common to the good and to the bad. We ought yet always to consider it as God's judgment. When a godly man is left without burial, we must know that all things happen for good to God's children, according to what Paul says, whether it be life or death, it is for their salvation. (Romans 8:28) But when God gives a remarkable proof of his wrath against an ungodly man, our eyes ought to be opened; for it is not right to be blind to the manifest judgments of God; for it is not in vain that Paul reminds us that God's judgment will come on the ungodly; but he would have us carefully to consider how God punishes the reprobate in life and in death and even after death. It follows ---
Jeremiah 36:31
31. And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of
Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not.
31. Et visitabo super eum et super semen ejus, et super servos ejus iniquitatem eormn, et evenire faciam illis (super eos, ad verbum) et super habitatores
Jerusalem, et super virum Jehudab omne malum quod pronuntiavi adversus cos, et non a udierunt.
Here a reason is given for what the former verse contains; for if the Prophet had only said, that the dead body of the king would remain unburied and cast out in dishonor to be exposed in the night to the cold and in the day to the heat, the narrative would not have produced the effect intended; but God shews here the cause, which was this, that he had forewarned King Jehoiakim and all his counsellors,
(called here servants) and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all the Jews universally: as then they had been in due time clearly told what calamity was near at hand,