ily; every believer may still say
with exultation: "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are
become new." It is the greatness of this promise which occasions the
direct address, whilst hitherto the Lord had spoken of the wife in the
third person. She shall hear face to face, the great word out of His
mouth, in order that she may be assured that it is she whom it
concerns; and in order to express its greatness, its joyfulness, and
the difficulty of believing it, it is repeated three times. _Calvin_
says: "Because it was difficult to deliver the people from fear and
despair, and because they could not but be [Pg 270] aware how
grievously they had sinned, and in how many ways they had alienated
themselves from God, it was necessary to employ many consolations, that
thus their faith might be confirmed. One likes to hear the repetition
of the intelligence of a great and unexpected good fortune which one
has some difficulty in realizing. And what could a man, despairing on
account of his sins, less readily realize than the greatest of all
miracles--viz., that all his sins should be done away with, at once and
for ever? But the repetition is, in this case, so much the more full of
consolation, that, each time, it is accompanied with the promise of
some new blessing; that, each time, it opens up some new prospect of
new blessings from this new connection. First, there is the eternal
duration,--then, as a pledge of this, the attributes which God would
display in bestowing it,--and, finally, there are the blessings which
He would impart to His betrothed." The [Hebrew: levlM] points back to
the painful dissolution of the former marriage-covenant: This new one
shall not be liable to such a dissolution; for "the mountains shall
depart, and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from
thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the
Lord:" Is. liv. 10. The attributes which God will display towards the
wife, and the conduct which she shall observe towards Him through His
mercy, are connected with [Hebrew: arwtiK li], "I betroth thee to Me,"
by means of [Hebrew: b], which is often used to mark the circumstances
on which some action rests. Thus, in the case before us, the
betrothment rests upon what God vouchsafes along with it, inasmuch as
thereby only does it become a true betrothment. That the accompanying
gifts must be thus distributed--as we have done--first, the faithful
discharge of all t