An exposition with practical observations continued upon the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters…

Fourthly, We may take the hungry, yet more largely; for any ¹that are low and poor, whom God stirs up and sends in judgement as his teeth, to consume and eat up, to devour and destroy the portion of such fat ones. Every spoiler is a hungry one; spoilers devour as if they had never eaten in their lives, they sweep all away: The word which we translate to eat up, signifies the most fierce kind of eating: when a man eats, as if he could never have enough. And therefore it is applied to the eating of fire, which we know is the most hungry thing in the world; nothing will satisfy ²the appetite of that hungry element, the more it eats, the more hungry and devouring it is. Hence that adjunct of fire (Isa. 29. 6.) A flame of a devouring fire, or, the flame (it is the word of the text) of an eating fire; a fire whose stomach is able to digest all the material creatures in the world. So (Job 1.) it is said, that the fire of God, or a great fire did eat up the sheep, the fire came hungry and consumed them; such is the force of the word here used; and secondly, it is applied in Scripture, to the eating of the sword; which (alas!) we know is very hungry too, My sword shall devour flesh, Deut. 32. 42. Thirdly, it is applied to savage ⟨p. 206⟩beasts (Gen. 37. 33.) when Jacob bewaileth the loss of his son Joseph, he saith, an evil beast hath devoured him. Fourthly, the cruelty of persecutors (in whom wild beasts, and sword and fire are all met, if not swallowed up.) The cruelty, I say, of persecutors is expressed by this word, They eat up my people like bread, Psal. 14. 4. Wild beasts, and sword, and fire, and above all the persecuting spirits of men, are the most hungry and speedy devourers, such a devouring shall consume the harvest of these foolish men, The hungry shall eat it up: Here we may observe, That