II. Their treatment of her And carriage to her
II. Their treatment of her And carriage to her
And, 1st, "The watchmen, that went about the city, smote and wounded her;" which, if we understand of the true ministers of the gospel (though I rather think that others are intended) must be meant, either of their upbraiding and reproaching her for her former unkindness to Christ, and negligence of her duty; when they told her, and hit her in the teeth of her former sins and miscarriages, they smote and cut her to the heart, opened the wound, and made it bleed afresh; and so, like Job's friends, proved miserable comforters, who broke him in pieces with words, with words both of reproof and reproach they laid open her sins to her, and sharply reproved her for them, when they should have comforted her with the doctrines of justification by Christ's righteousness, and pardon by his blood; for Christ's own ministers may sometimes be mistaken in timing reproofs and corrections; or else, she being under the ministry of the word, and hearing some sweet discourses concerning Christ's person and grace, her heart was smitten and wounded therewith, which made her charge the daughters of Jerusalem, in the following verse, that when they found her beloved, they would tell him, that she was sick of, or wounded with love. But if we understand it of false teachers, which seems most agreeable; then by those smitings and woundings, are meant, the scandalous lives of such persons, the rents and divisions they make, the false doctrines which they preach; and those human traditions, which with force, they impose upon the consciences of men, being assisted by civil magistrates, whom they stir up to make penal laws, and put them in execution against the saints; by all which means they make the hearts of the righteous sad, and wound the consciences of God's children. One of the Greek versions is, "they scourged me,"[3924] whipped her till she was black and blue; as the Jews did the first Christians in their synagogues.
2dly, "The keepers of the walls took away her veil from her:" veils were used by women in those countries: sometimes for ornament (Isaiah 3:23), sometimes as a token of modesty; thus Rebekah, when she found that Isaac was coming to meet her, covered herself with a veil (Genesis 24:65), and sometimes as a token of subjection to the husband; for which the apostle argues, that women ought to be covered (10), at marriage, it was customary with the Grecians[3925], to give a veil to the new-married bride; the bridegroom, with the Romans, used to give the bride a veil, called flammeum[3926], from its being of a flame-color, either yellow or red, expressive of the blushing and modesty of the new bride[3927]; and the like custom might obtain with the Jews. Now for the keepers to take away her veil from her, was to strip her of her ornaments, and expose her frailties and infirmities, which ought to be covered; it was to disown her as the spouse of Christ, and to represent her as a whorish and impudent woman; and, whereas she professed herself to be Christ's, to serve him in the way of his appointments; they endeavored to "corrupt her from the simplicity that is in Christ," and to draw her aside to a reception of false doctrines, and to a compliance with human traditions: and then more especially, may they be said to take away her veil, when they oppose and endeavor to subvert or remove the doctrine of imputed righteousness by Christ; Christ's righteousness is the believer's veil or covering; this is "the wedding garment, περιζολαιον νυμφικον, the nuptial robe, as Gregory Nyssen[3928] calls the veil here; and when persons attempt to take away this doctrine, they do as much as in them lies to take away the church's veil. And now all this cruelty was exercised by persons professing religion, under a mask of godliness; by those who were officers in the church, from whom she might have expected a quite different treatment; and indeed, who were more bitter enemies to Christ and his apostles, than the priests and Pharisees were? and who have more cruelly persecuted in after-ages, than those who have professed Christianity! The church thus escaping from the watchmen and keepers, with blows, wounds, and the loss of her veil, meets with the daughters of Jerusalem, to whom she speaks in the following manner.