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

When God reckons with the greatest of wicked men, he can humble and pull them down by the meanest and poorest of men. A very shrub, a man that comes out of the thorns may pull down the tallest Cedar; It increases affliction, to be overcome by a weak, despised, inconsiderable enemy. It troubled Abimelech more to be slain by a woman, than to be slain; and therefore (upon the matter) he would have the pain to be twice killed, rather than the disgrace to be killed by a woman; for having received his deaths-wound by her hand, yet, he calls hastily to the young man his Armour-bearer, and said unto him; draw out thy sword now, and slay me, that men say not of me, a woman slew him, Judg. 10. 54. The Lord threatens it, both as a just retaliation for the sin, and an aggravation of the punishment of his people, I will move them to jealousy with those that are not a people, I will ⟨p. 208⟩provoke them to anger with a foolish Nation, Deut. 32. 21. The Gentiles, as Paul expounds this place, Rom. 10. 19. and Peter, 1 Peter 2. 10.) whom the Jews slighted as a foolish people, as no people, came in and eat up the harvest of the Gospel, and were invested with greater privileges than they. This made the Jews mad with anger, as you may read in that famous record of it, Acts 22. ver. 21, 22. They could not bear it, that, Those men of the thorns, should partake of the fatness of the Olive. As Jotham spake in his Parable, (Judg. 9 15.) when the question was, which of the trees should be King, the olive or the vine, &c. at last it fell to the brambles lot, or to the thorn. That parable gives some light to this exposition: For those several sorts of trees shadowed out the several sorts of men, and the bramble shadowed out the meanest sort of men; a man of thorns, or a man coming out of the thorns. And he adds (which further answers this sense) Let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the Cedars of Lebanon; which in plain English is, let there come power from a powerless man, who is but as a brier, or as a thorn, and consume the greatest and the mightiest.