He charges them with breach of covenant, such a breach
Obedience 183 are curses of the covenant as well as blessings. Moses set before them not only life and good but death and evil (Deut. xxx. 15).
So they had fair warning given them of the fatal consequences of disobedience.
(f) Lest this covenant should be forgotten, and, because out of mind, should be thought out of date, God had from time to time called to them to remember it. By His servants the prophets He had made a continual claim of this rent, so that they could not plead in excuse of their nonpayment, that it had never been demanded. From the day he brought them out of Egypt to this day, and that was near a thousand years, he had been, in one way or other, at sundry times, and in divers manners, protesting to them the necessity of obedience. God keeps an account how long we have enjoyed the means of grace, and how powerful those means have been; how often we have been not only spoken to, but protested to, concerning our duty.
(g) This covenant was consented to (verse 5). '' Then answered I, and said, Amen, so be it, O Lord."' These are the words of the prophet, expressing either: (i) His own consent to the covenant for himself, and his desire to have the benefit of it. God promised Canaan to the obedient. Lord, saith he, I take Thee at Thy word. I will be obedient. Let me have mine inheritance in the land of promise, of which Canaan is a type.
Or, (11) his good will and good wish that His people might have the benefit of it; Amen. Lord, let them still be kept in possession of this good land and not turned out of it. Make good the promise to them.
Or, (iii) his people's consent to the covenant. "Then answered I," in the name of the people, ''So be it.'' Taking it in this sense it refers to the declared consent which the people gave to the covenant. Not only to the precepts of it, when they said, "All that the Lord shall say unto us we will do, and will be obedient,"' but to the penalties, when they said Amen to all the curses upon Mount Ebal. The more solemnly we have engaged ourselves to God, the more reason we have to hope that it will be perpetual, and yet here it did not prove so.
5. THE CuHarGES AGAINST THE NATION He charges them with breach of covenant, such a breach as amounted to a forfeiture of their charter (verse 8). God had