ition,
namely, that, while all men are liars, He does not lie; that He can
never repent of His covenant and promises. The "ordinances" (moon and
stars are, in their regular return, themselves, as it were, embodied
ordinances), are mentioned already in ver. 35, because just the
circumstance that, according to eternal and inviolable laws, sun and
moon must appear every day at a fixed time, and have done so for
thousands and thousands of years, testifies more strongly for His
omnipotence and absolute power, never liable to any foreign influence
or interference, than if they at one time appeared, and, at another,
failed to appear. God's omnipotence, as it is testified by a look to
nature (_Calvin_: "The Prophet contents himself with pointing out what
even boys knew, viz., that the sun makes his daily circuit round the
whole earth, that the moon does the same, and that the stars in their
turn succeed, so that, as it were, the moon with the stars exercises
dominion by night, and, afterwards, the sun reigns by day"), results
from the fact that He is the pure, absolute, being (Jehovah His name,
comp. remarks on Mal. iii. 6); and it is just because He is this, that
His counsels, which He declared without any condition attached to them,
must be [Pg 447] unchangeable. To believe that He has for ever rejected
Israel, is to degrade Him, to make Him an idol, a creature.--In ver.
36, the immutability of God's counsel of grace is put on a level with
the immutability of God's order of nature; but this is done with a view
to the weakness of the people, who receive, for a pledge of their
election, that which is most firm among visible things; so that every
rising of the sun and moon is to them a guarantee of it; compare Ps.
lxxxix. 37, 38. But considered in itself, the counsels of God's grace
are _much firmer_ than the order of nature. The heavens wax old as a
garment, and as a vesture He changes them and they are changed (Ps.
cii. 27-29); heaven and earth shall pass away, but the word of God
shall not pass away.--From chap. xxxiii. 24: "They despise my people
([Hebrew: emi]) that they should be still a nation ([Hebrew: gvi])
before them" it appears why it is that [Hebrew: gvi] is here used, and
not [Hebrew: eM]. The covenant-people in their despair imagined that
their national existence, which, in the Present, was destroyed, was
gone for ever. If only their national existence was sure, then
also was their existence as a covenant-people. F