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

¹For the first then, The reading of the words. The Seventy read the words a little different from this reading of ours in the English,² [Greek or Hebrew]. Conturbatio ac stimulus, I will be a trouble unto Ephraim and a prick unto Judah. I will trouble, prick, goad them, I will vex them. The blessed God who is a rest unto His people; He is a trouble, a prick, and goad to vex His enemies, to vex the ungodly. The old Latin,³ and so Hi•rom readeth it thus, Ego tanquam tinea Ephraim, I will be as a moth unto Ephraim; he readeth the first as we do in our books: but the second, Quasi & putredo domni Judah. Others as Munster, Leo Judah, Drusius, render it, quasi teredimis. Teredo is a worm that eateth out the heart of the strongest wood. Minutissimus vermiculus, saith Luther upon the place; And Pliny saith it is the worm that breeds in Ships at Sea, and eateth out the heart of the strongest Oake• planks at Sea: but yet often translated rottenness, because the worm causeth that wood to be rotten. Prov. 12.4. A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband saith the text, but she that makes ashamed, is rottenness to his bones: There is the same word, a woman whose behaviour is such in company as makes ashamed, is rottenness to a mans bones, be they never so strong. That for the reading.

¹For the first then, The reading of the words. The Seventy reade the words a little different from this reading of ours in the English,² 〈non-Latin alphabet〉. Conturbatio ac stimulus, I will be a trouble unto Ephraim and a prick unto Judah. I will trouble, prick, goad them, I will vex them. The blessed God who is a rest unto His people; He is a trouble, a prick, and goad to vex His enemies, to vex the ungodly. The old Latin,³