submission to God’s sovereignty. As the formal object of obedience is
the authority of God enacting the law, so the formal object of patience
is the authority of God inflicting the punishment: as his right of
commanding is to be eyed in the one, so his right of punishing is
to be considered in the other. This was Eli’s condition, when he had
received a message that might put flesh and blood into a mutiny, the
rending the priesthood from his family, and the ruin of his house: yet
this consideration, “It is the Lord,” calms him into submission, and
a willing compliance with the Divine pleasure (1 Sam. iii. 18): “It
is the Lord, let him do what seems good in his sight.” Job was of the
same strain (Job i. 21): “The Lord gives, and the Lord hath taken away,
blessed be the name of the Lord;” he considers God as a sovereign, who
was not to be reproached, or have anything uncomely uttered of him, for
what he had done. To be patient because we cannot avoid it, or resist
it, is a violent, not a loyal patience; but to submit because it is the
will of God to inflict; to be silent, because the sovereignty of God
doth order it, is a patience of a true complexion. The other kind of
patience is no other than that of an enemy that will free himself as
soon as he can, and by any way, though never so violent, that offers
itself. This sort of patience is that of a subject acknowledging the
supreme authority over him, and that he ought to be ordered by the will,
and to the glory of God, more than by his own will, and for his own
ease; “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth” (Ps. xxxix. 10); not because
I could not help it, but “because thou didst it,” thou who art my
sovereign Lord. The greatness of God claims an awful and inviolable
respect from his creatures in what way soever he doth dispose of them;
this is due to him; since his kingdom ruleth over all, his kingdom
should be acknowledged by all, and his royal authority submitted to
in all that he doth.
{b472} DISCOURSE XIV.
ON GOD’S PATIENCE.
NAHUM I. 3.――The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and
will not at all acquit the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the
whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his
feet.
THE subject of this prophecy is God’s sentence against Nineveh, the
head and metropolis of the Assyrian empire: a city famous for its
strength, and thickness of its walls, and the multitude of its towers
for defence against an enemy. The forces of this empire did God use as
a scourge against the Israelites, and by their hands ruined Samaria,
the chief city of the ten tribes, and transplanted them as captives
into another country (2 Kings xvii. 5, 6), about six years after
Hezekiah came to the crown of Judah (2 Kings xviii. compared with chap.
xvii. 6), in whose time, or, as some think, later, Nahum uttered this
prophecy. The name, _Nahum_, signifies Comforter; though the matter
of his prophecy be dreadful to Nineveh, it was comfortable to the
people of God: for a promise is made, (ver. 7), “The Lord is good,
a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust
in him.” And an encouragement to Judah, to keep their solemn feasts,
(ver. 15: and also in chap. ii. 3), with a declaration of the misery
of Nineveh, and the destruction of it. Observe,
1. In all the fears of God’s people, God will have a Comforter for
them. Judah might well be dejected with the calamity of their brethren,
not knowing but it might be their own turn shortly after. They knew not
where the ambition of the Assyrian would stop; but God by his prophets
calms their fears of their furious neighbor, by predicting to them the
ruin of their feared adversary.
2. The destruction of the church’s enemies is the comfort of the church.
By that God is glorified in his justice, and the church secured in its
worship.
3. The victories of persecutors secure them not from being the
triumphs of others. The Assyrians that conquered and captived Israel,
were themselves to be conquered and captived by the Medes. The whole
oppressing empire is threatened with destruction in the ruin of
their chief city; accordingly it was accomplished, and the empire
extinguished by a greater power. God burns the rod when it hath done
the work he appointed it for; and the wisp of straw wherewith the
vessels are scoured, is flung into the fire, or upon the dunghill.
Nahum begins his prophecy majestically, with a description of the
{b473} wrath and fury of God. (Ver. 2), “God is jealous, and the Lord
revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious: the Lord will take
vengeance on his adversaries, and reserveth wrath for his enemies.”
And therefore the whole of it is called (ver. 1), “The burden of
Nineveh,” as those prophecies are, which are composed of threatenings
of judgments, which lie as a mighty weight upon the heads and backs of
sinners.
_God is jealous_――jealous of his glory and worship, and jealous for
his people, and their security. He cannot long bear the oppressions of
his people, and the boasts of his enemies. He is jealous for himself,
and is jealous for you of Judah, who retain his worship. He is not
forgetful of those that remember him, nor of the danger of those
that are desirous to maintain his honor in the world. In this first
expression, the prophet uses the covenant name, God; the covenant
runs, “I am your God,” or “the Lord your God;” mostly God without Lord,
never Lord without God: and, therefore, his jealousy here is meant of
the care of his people, and the relation that his actions against his
enemies have to his servants. He is a lover of his own, and a revenger
on his enemies.
_The Lord revengeth, and is furious._――He now describes God by a name
of sovereignty and power, when he describes him in his wrath and fury,
and is furious. _Heb._ בעל חמה, _Lord of hot anger_. God will vindicate
his own glory, and have his right on his enemies in a way of punishment,
if they will not give it him in a way of obedience. It is three times
repeated, to show the certainty of the judgment;[1024] and the name of
“Lord” added to every one, to intimate the power wherewith the judgment
should be executed. It is not a fatherly correction of children in a
way of mercy, but an offended Sovereign’s destruction of his enemies in
a way of vengeance. There is an anger of God with his own people, which
hath more of mercy than wrath; in this his rod is guided by his bowels.
There is a fury of God against his enemies, where there is sole wrath
without any tincture of mercy; when his sword is all edge, without
any balsam drops upon it. Such a fury as David deprecates (Ps. vi. 1):
“O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, nor chasten me in thy sore
displeasure,” with a fury untempered with grace, and insupportable
wrath.
_He reserves wrath for his enemies._――He lays it up in his treasury, to
be brought out and expended in a due season. “Wrath” is supplied by our
translators, and is not in the Hebrew. He reserves, what?――that which
is too sharp to be expressed, too great to be conceived: a vengeance
it is. And ונוטר הוא, _He reserves it_. He that hath an infinite wrath, he
reserves it; that hath a strength and power to execute it.
(Ver. 3.) _The Lord is slow to anger_, _Heb._ ארך אפים, _of broad
nostrils_. The anger of God is expressed by this word, which signifies
“nostrils:” as, Job ix. 13, “If God will not withdraw his anger,”
_Heb._ “his nostrils.” And the anger whereby the wicked are consumed,
is called the “breath of nostrils” (Job iv. 9); and when he is angry,
smoke and fire are said to go out of his nostrils (2 Sam. ii. 9); and
in Psalm lxxiv. 1, “Why doth thy anger smoke?” _Heb._ “Why do {b474}
thy nostrils smoke?” So the rage of a horse, when he is provoked
in battle, is called the glory of his nostrils (Job xxxix. 20). He
breathes quick fumes, and neighs with fury. And slowness to anger is
here expressed by the phrase of “long or wide nostrils:” because in
a vehement anger, the blood boiling about the heart, exhales men’s
spirit, which fume up, and break out in dilated nostrils. But where
the passages are straighter the spirits have not so quick a vent, and
therefore raise more motions within; or, because the wider the nostrils
are, the more cool air is drawn in to temper the heat of the heart,
where the angry spirits are gathered; and so the passion is allayed,
and sooner calmed. God speaks of himself in Scripture often after the
rate of men; Jeremiah prays (ch. xv. 15) that God would not take him
away in his long‑suffering, _Heb._ “in the length of his nostrils,”
_i. e._ Be not slow and backward in thy anger against my persecutors,
as to give them time and opportunity to destroy me. The nostrils,
as well as other members of a human body, are ascribed to God. He is
slow to anger; he hath anger in his nature, but is not always in the
execution of it.
_And great in power._――This may refer to his patience as the cause of
it, or as a bar to the abuse of it.
1. “He is slow to anger, and great in power,” _i. e._ his power
moderates his anger; he is not so impotent as to be at the command
of his passions, as men are; he can restrain his anger under just
provocations to exercise it. His power over himself is the cause of
his slowness to wrath, as Numb. xiv. 17: “Let the power of my Lord be
great,” saith Moses, when he pleads for the Israelites’ pardon. Men
that are great in the world are quick in passions, and are not so ready
to forgive an injury, or bear with an offender, as one of a meaner rank.
It is a want of a power over a man’s self that makes him do unbecoming
things upon a provocation. A prince that can bridle his passion, is a
king over himself, as well as over his subjects. God is slow to anger,
because great in power: he hath no less power over himself than over
his creatures: he can sustain great injuries without an immediate and
quick revenge: he hath a power of patience, as well as a power of
justice.
2. Or thus: “He is slow to anger and great in power.” He is slow
to anger, but not for want of power to revenge himself; his power
is as great to punish, as his patience to spare. It seems thus, that
slowness to anger is brought in as an objection against the revenge
proclaimed. What do you tell us of vengeance, vengeance, nothing but
such repetitions of vengeance?――as though we were ignorant that God is
slow to anger. It is true, saith the prophet, I acknowledge it as much
as you, that God is slow to anger; but withal, great in power. His
anger certainly succeeds his abused patience; he will not always bridle
in his wrath, but one time or other let it march out in fury against
his adversaries. The Assyrians, who had captived the ten tribes, and
been victorious a little against the Jews, might think that the God
of Israel had been conquered by their gods, as well as the people
professing him had been subdued by their arms; that God had lost all
his power; and the Jews might argue, from God’s patience to his enemies,
against the credit {b475} of the prophet’s denouncing revenge. The
prophet answers, to the terror of the one, and the comfort of the other,
that this indulgence to his enemies, and not accounting with them for
their crimes, proceeded from the greatness of his patience, and not
from any debility in his power. As it refers to the Assyrian, it may
be rendered thus: You Ninevites, upon your repentance after Jonah’s
thundering of judgments, are witnesses of the slowness of God to anger,
and had your punishments deferred; but, falling to your old sins, you
shall find a real punishment, and that he hath as much power to execute
his ancient threatenings, as he had then compassion to recall them; his
patience to you then was not for want of power to ruin you, but was the
effect of his goodness towards you. As it refers to the Jews, it may be
thus paraphrased: Do not despise this threatening against your enemies
because of the greatness of their might, the seeming stability of
their empire, and the terror they possess all the nations with round
about them: it may be long before it comes, but assure yourselves the
threatening I denounce shall certainly be executed; though he hath
patience to endure them a hundred and thirty‑five years (for so long as
it was before Nineveh was destroyed after this threatening, as Ribera,
_in loc._[1025] computes from the years of the reign of the kings of
Judah), yet he hath also power to verify his word, and accomplish his
will: assure yourselves, he will not at all acquit the wicked.
_He will not acquit the wicked._――He will not always account the
criminal an innocent, as he seems to do by a present sparing of them,
and dealing with them as if they were destitute of any provoking
carriage towards him, and he void of any resentment of it. He will
“not acquit the wicked;” how is this? Who then can be saved? Is there
no place for remission? He will “not acquit the wicked.” _i. e._ he
will not acquit obstinate sinners. As he hath patience for the wicked,
so he hath mercy for the penitent. The wicked are the subjects of his
long‑suffering, but not of his acquitting grace; he doth not presently
punish their sins, because he is slow to anger; but without their
repentance he will not blot out their sins, because he is righteous in
judgment: if God should acquit them without repentance for their crimes,
he must himself repent of his own law and righteous sanction of it. “He
will not acquit,” _i. e._ he will not go back from the thing he hath
spoken, and forbear, at long run, the punishment he hath threatened.
_The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind._――The way of God signifies
sometimes the law of God, sometimes the providential operations of God:
“Is not my way equal?” (Ezek. xviii. 25). It seems there to take in
both.
_And in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet._――The
prophet describes here the fight of God with the Assyrians, as if
he rushed upon them with a mighty noise of an army, raising the dust
with the feet of their horses, and motion of their chariots.[1026]
Symbolically, it signifies the multitude of the Chaldean and Median
forces, invading, besieging, and storming the city. It signifies,
1. The rule of providence. The way of God is in every motion {b476} of
the creature; he rules all things, whirlwinds, storms, and clouds; his
way is in all their walks, in the whirlings and blusterings of the one,
in the raising and dissolving the other. He blows up the winds, and
compacts the clouds, to make them serviceable to his designs.
2. The management of wars by God. His way is in the storm: as he was
the Captain of the Assyrians against Samaria, so he will be the Captain
of the Medes against Nineveh: as Israel was not so much wasted by the
Assyrians as by the Lord, who levied and armed their forces; so Nineveh
shall be subverted, rather by God, than by the arms of the Medes. Their
force is described not to be so much from human power as Divine. God is
President in all the commotions of the world, his way is in every
whirlwind.
3. The easiness of executing the judgment. He is of so great power that
he can excite tempests in the air, and overthrow them with the clouds,
which are the dust of his feet: he can blind his enemies, and avenge
himself on them: he is Lord of clouds, and can fill their womb with
hail, lightnings, and thunders, to burst out upon those he kindles
his anger against: he is of so great force, that he needs not use the
strength of his arm, but the dust of his feet, to effect his destroying
purpose.
4. The suddenness of the judgment. Whirlwinds come suddenly, without
any harbingers to give notice of their approach: clouds are swift
in their motion; “Who are those that fly as a cloud?” (Isa. lx. 8),
_ i. e._ with a mighty nimbleness. What God doth, he shall do on the
sudden, come upon them before they are aware, be too quick for them in
his motion to overrun and overreach them. The winds are described with
wings, in regard of the quickness of their motion.
5. The terror of judgments. “The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind,”
_i. e._ in great displeasure. The anger of the Lord is often compared
to a storm; he shall bring clouds of judgments upon them, many and
thick, as terrible as when a day is turned into night, by the mustering
of the darkest clouds that interpose between the sun and the earth.
“Clouds and darkness are round about him, and a fire goes before him,”
when he “burns up his enemies” (Ps. xcvii. 2, 3). The judgments shall
have terror without mercy, as clouds obscure the light, and are dark
masks before the face and glory of the sun, and cut off its refreshing
beams from the earth. Clouds note multitude and obscurity; God could
crush them without a whirlwind, beat them to powder with one touch, but
he will bring his judgments in the most surprising and amazing manner
to flesh and blood, so that all their glory shall be changed into
nothing but terror, by the noise of the bellowing winds, and the clouds,
like ink, blacking the heavens.
6. The confusion of the offenders upon God’s proceeding. A whirlwind
is not only a boisterous wind, that hurls and rolls everything out of
its place, but, by its circular motion, by its winding to all points of
the compass, it confounds things, and jumbles them together. It keeps
not one point, but, by a circumgyration, toucheth upon all. Clouds,
like dust, shall be blown in their face, and gum up their eyes: they
shall be in a posture of confusion, not know what counsels to take,
what motions to resolve upon. Let them look {b477} to every point of
heaven and earth, they shall meet with a whirlwind to confound them,
and cloudy dust to blind them.
7. The irresistibleness of the judgment. Winds have more than a
giant‑like force, a torrent of compacted air, that, with an invincible
wifulness, bears all before it, displaceth the firmest trees, and
levels the tallest towers, and pulls up bodies from their natural place.
Clouds also are over our heads, and above our reach; when God places
them upon his people for defence they are an invincible security (Isa.
iv. 5); and when he moves them, as his chariot, against a people, they
end in an irresistible destruction. Thus the ruin of the wicked is
described (Prov. x. 25): “As the whirlwind passes, so is the wicked no
more:” it blows them down, sweeps them away, they irrecoverably fall
before the force of it. What heart can endure, and what hands can be
strong, in the days wherein God doth deal with them! (Ezek. xxii. 14).
Thus is the judgment against Nineveh described: God hath his way in the
whirlwind, to thunder down their strongest walls, which were so thick
that chariots could march abreast upon them; and batter down their
mighty towers, which that city had in multitudes upon their walls.
They are the first words I intend to insist upon, to treat of the
Patience of God described in those words, “The Lord is slow to anger.”
_Doctrine._ Slowness to anger, or admirable patience, is the property
of the Divine nature. As patience signifies suffering, so it is not
in God. The Divine nature is impassible, incapable of any impair, it
cannot be touched by the violences of men, nor the essential glory
of it be diminished by the injuries of men; but as it signifies a
willingness to defer, and an unwillingness to pour forth his wrath upon
sinful creatures, he moderates his provoked justice, and forbears to
revenge the injuries he daily meets with in the world. He suffers no
grief by men’s wronging him, but he restrains his arm from punishing
them according to their merits; and thus there is patience in every
cross a man meets with in the world, because, though it be a punishment,
it is less than is merited by the unrighteous rebel, and less than may
be inflicted by a righteous and powerful God. This patience is seen in
his providential works in the world: “He suffered the nations to walk
in their own way,” and the witness of his providence to them was his
“giving them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their heart with food
and gladness” (Acts xvi. 17). The heathens took notice of it, and
signified it by feigning their god Saturn, to be bound a whole year
in a soft cord, a cord of wool, and expressed it by this proverb:
“The mills of the gods grind slowly;” _i. e._ God doth not use men
with that severity that they deserve; the mills being usually turned
by criminals condemned to that work.[1027] This, in Scripture, is
frequently expressed by a slowness to anger (Ps. ciii. 8), sometimes
by long‑suffering, which is a patience with duration (Ps. cxlv. 8; Joel
ii. 13). He is slow to anger, he takes not the first occasions of a
provocation; he is long‑suffering (Rom. ix. 22), and (Ps. lxxxvi. 15)
he forbears punishment upon many occasions offered him. It is long
before he consents to give fire to his wrath, {b478} and shoot out his
thunderbolts. Sin hath a loud cry, but God seems to stop his ears, not
to hear the clamor it raises and the charge it presents. He keeps his
sword a long time in the sheath; one calls the patience of God the
sheath of his sword, upon those words (Ezek. xxi. 3), “I will draw
forth my sword out of his sheath.” This is one remarkable letter in the
name of God; he himself proclaims it (Exod. xxxiv. 6): “The Lord, the
Lord God, merciful, gracious, and long‑suffering.” And Moses pleads
it in the behalf of the people (Numb. xiv. 18), where he placeth it
in the first rank; the Lord is “long‑suffering and of great mercy:”
it is the first spark of mercy, and ushers it to its exercises in the
world.[1028] In the Lord’s proclamation, it is put in the middle link,
mercy and truth together; mercy could have no room to act if patience
did not prepare the way; and his truth and goodness, in his promise
of the Redeemer, would not have been manifest to the world if he had
shot his arrows as soon as men committed their sins, and deserved his
punishment. This perfection is expressed by other phrases, as “keeping
silence” (Ps. l. 21): “These things hast thou done, and I kept silence,”
אלה עשית והחרשתי; it signifies to behave one’s self as a deaf or dumb man.
I did not fly in thy face, as some do, with a great noise upon a light
provocation, as if their life, honor, estates, were at the stake; I
did not presently call thee to the bar, and pronounce judicial sentence
upon thee according to the law, but demeaned myself as if I had been
ignorant of thy crimes, and had not been invested with the power of
judging thee for them. _Chald._ “I waited for thy conversion.” God’s
patience is the silence of his justice, and the first whisper of his
mercy. It is also expressed by not laying folly to men (Job xxiv. 12);
men groan under the oppressions of others, yet God lays not folly
to them, _i. e._ to the oppressors; God suffers them to go on with
impunity. He doth not deliver his people because he would try them,
and takes not revenge upon the unrighteous, because in patience he doth
bear with them: patience is the life of his providence in this world.
He chargeth not men with their crimes here, but reserves them, upon
impenitency, for another trial. This attribute is so great a one, that
it is signally called by the name of “Perfection” (Matt. v. 45, 48).
He had been speaking of Divine goodness, and patience to evil men,
and he concludes, “Be you perfect,” &c., implying it to be an amazing
perfection of the Divine nature, and worthy of imitation.
In the prosecution of this, I. Let us consider the nature of this
patience. II. Wherein it is manifested. III. Why God doth exercise so
much patience. IV. The Use.
I. The nature of this patience.