Commentary upon the Prophecy of Isaiah

The Prophet brings in the Lord here complaining of the Jews,¹ for distrusting his power and goodness; as also for comparing him with Idols: nay, for abasing him beneath them. For in seeing the Chaldeans to have the world at will, they judged themselves hopeless, and that the memory of the covenant was so abolished, as if there had been no God left in heaven to have taken care of them. The Lord takes up a complaint therefore against them, in that he perceived they attributed some power to the Idols, and in so doing, obscured his regal authority. He handled the same argument in the 42. & 43. Chapters, and in those that follow: and therefore we have the less need now to insist any longer upon every word. That they should not measure Gods power then, by the view of things present, he commands them to raise up their minds higher. The like advertisement were fit to be made to us at this day, if in beholding the prosperity of the Papists, we should therefore imagine that they had the true religion on their side: for otherwise, what were it but to compare the living God with Idols? This circumstance is diligently to be noted, because many expositors baulking, and neglecting it, do lessen the weight nf this sentence: for they think the Prophet cries out only against the superstitious, who attribute some divinity to wood and stone, because Gods glory is defamed, when he is compared to dead Images. I nothing doubt therefore but he taxeth their perverse judgement, and crooked conceits, wherewith the people were transported and carried away in adversity, to think that God respected the Babylonians above them. For, if God had favoured the Babylonians, it would thereupon have followed, that he had also approved of their idolatry: and thus his glory should have been given from him, unto senseless creatures. To conclude, hence we may gather a general doctrine