of it, the symbolical action passed over into a mere figure. With
this exception, this section also contains the alternation of
punishment and threatening, and of promise,--the latter beginning with
ver. 16 (14). The features of the image, which were less attended to in
the preceding portion, but are here more carefully portrayed, are the
rejection of the unfaithful wife, and her gradual restoration. _Calvin_
says: "After God has laid open their sins before men. He adds some
consolation, and tempers the severity, lest they should despair. But
then He returns again to threatenings, and He must do so necessarily;
for though men may have been terrified by the fear of punishment, yet
they do not recover, and become wise for ever." "By a new impetus as it
were," says _Manger_, "he suddenly returns to expand the same argument,
and sets out again from things more sad."

Ver. 4. "_Contend with your mother, contend; for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband: and let her put away her whoredoms from her
face, and her adultery from her breasts._"

_Calvin_ is of opinion that a contrast is here intended, inasmuch as
the Israelites were striving with God, and attributed to Him the cause
of their misfortune: "Do not contend with Me, but rather with your
mother, who, by her adultery, has brought down _righteous_ punishment
upon herself and upon you." But this interpretation is inadmissible;
because it proceeds [Pg 231] from the unfounded supposition that the
divorce is to be considered as having already taken place outwardly,
whilst the contending here clearly appears as one by which divorce may
yet be averted. The words, "Contend with your mother," rather mean, on
the contrary, that it is high time to call her to account, if they
would not go to destruction along with her. From this, however, we are
not entitled to infer that the moral condition of the children was
better than that of the mother. Without any regard to their moral
condition, the prophet only wishes to say that their interest required
them to do this. If it were not his intention just to carry out the
image of adultery, he might as well have called upon the mother to
contend against the children, as it is said in Is. li. 1: "Behold, for
your iniquities you have been sold, and for your transgression your
mother has been put away." In point of fact, the mother has no
standing-place apart from the children. _Vitringa_ says: "One and the
same people is called 'moth