Confirming by an oath.
God's judgments sometimes take, and will continue to take, the wicked by surprise (Matthew 24:36-39). But this need not be, and should not be, and can be only where blindness, or heedlessness, or incredulity make warning useless. God always warns before he strikes. Sometimes he warns by divers methods at once. Often he warns again and again. Invariably he warns with a solemnity that makes disbelief a crime and stupid. Here is a case in point.
I. THE OATH THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN. "God is not a man, that he should lie." To do so would be a natural impossibility, a contradiction of himself. For the same reason his truthfulness can have no degrees; his slightest word is absolutely inviolable. Yet to human apprehension an oath is peculiarly convincing, and, accommodating himself to men's weakness, God condescends, on peculiarly, solemn occasions, not merely to say, but swear. Here he swears:
1. By himself. "The Pride of Jacob" is Jehovah himself. Elsewhere explicitly God swears by "himself" (Jeremiah 51:14), by his "great Name" (Jeremiah 44:26), by his "holiness" (Amos 4:2), by his "life" (Ezekiel 33:11). This is of necessity. Men "swear by the greater." God, "because he can swear by no greater, swears by himself" (Hebrews 6:17, Hebrews 6:13). In this form of oath the greatest Being is invoked, and so the maximum of solemnity is reached, whether it is God who swears or man.
2. By himself in his ideal relation to Israel. "By the Pride of Jacob" Israel, alas! did not "glory in the Lord." They gloried in their idols. "These be thy gods, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt," they had said, in their blind fatuity, of the molten calf. God had been forgotten and his wonders ignored before they were many days accomplished, and in this forgetfulness they had persistently gone on. Yet was he none the less their Glory still, the Strength of Israel, their Light and Life, the Founder, Builder, Sustainer, of their kingdom, the one Source and Spring of all that made them great, This fundamental relation he emphasizes here in vowing vengeance on their sin. By this character, as their Life and Strength and Excellence, he swears he will now degrade and destroy them utterly. The nearer God's tie to the rebels, the greaser outrage is their rebellion, and the more embittered the after relations. It is on the ruins of violated friendship that the most irreconcilable enmity arises. Not even the heathen is as hateful, or doomed to a fate as direful, as the apostate.
II. THE RECORD THAT CANNOT BE ERASED. "I will not forget and forever." To forget is to forgive, put out of sight, treat as non-existent. "I will remember their iniquities no more." Sin unatoned for cannot be forgiven. God must be just in his justifying, and justice demands satisfaction. From the provided satisfaction the unbelieving sinner has turned away, and so from the grace of his own salvation. Neither can sin unforsaken. The sinner is in actual conflict with God, and the rebel may not he forgiven with arms in his hands. Neither can sin unrelated of. Still loving sin, the impenitent is not in a moral condition to appreciate pardon, and the gift of God is not to be thrown away. By such a threefold cord was Israel bound to inevitable destruction.
III. THE WORKS THAT CANNOT BE FORGOTTEN. There are sins more heinous, and for the authors of which it will be less tolerable in the judgment than for others (Matthew 11:22).
1. Such are the sins committed against the poor and needy. "God hath chosen the poor of this world" Their poverty presents the minimum of resistance to his grace. Their hardships excite his special pity. Their helplessness commends them to his special protection. He gives them the most prominent place in his religion. He champions them against their enemies. He requires his people to do the same. He identifies himself with them in the judgment, and he deals with men then in terms of their relation to the duties they owe the needy (Matthew 25:35-45). While God is "the Avenger of all such," oppression of the poor shall not go unpunished.
2. Such especially are the sins committed against the poor by those who bear his Name. The clement of beneficence bulked large in Judaism. Besides the general injunctions to regard the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7-11), there were special enactments allocating to them a poor tithe (Deuteronomy 14:28, Deuteronomy 14:29), the spontaneous produce of the soil (Le 25:5), the droppings from the sheaves, and the produce of the corners of the fields (Le 19:9, 10; 23:22), also sheaves accidentally dropped (Deuteronomy 24:19), as much from vineyard or field as the hungry wayfarer required to eat on the spot (Deuteronomy 23:24, Deuteronomy 23:25), and periodical entertainments at the tables of the rich (Deuteronomy 16:10, Deuteronomy 16:11). Thus nothing could be more utterly antagonistic to the genius of the Jewish religion than to rob or oppress the poor. The Israelite guilty of it sinned against Scripture, against custom, against education, against every deterrent powerful with men and increasing guilt before God. Christianity, too, is essentially benevolent. To "love one another," and "do good unto all," is the very spirit and essence of the religion of Christ. Injustice or oppression under Christian auspices is sin in its most abominable and heinous form.