When the boughs thereof are withered; when they shall begin to wither, as they will when they are thus gnawed and cropped by cattle. They shall be broken off, that there may be no hopes nor possibility of their recovery. The women; he mentions women, either because it is their usual work in the country to make fires, and to gather fuel for them, or to signify that the men should be generally destroyed. It is a people of no understanding; they do not understand either me or themselves, either my word or works; they know not the things which concern their own peace and happiness, but, like brute beasts made to be destroyed, they blindly and wilfully go on in those courses which will bring them to certain ruin. He that made them; both as they are creatures, and as they are his people; for this also is expressed by making or forming, as Psalms 100:3, Psalms 102:18 149:2. Thus he overthroweth their false and presumptuous conceits, that God would never destroy the work of his own hands, nor the seed of Abraham his friend for ever; and plainly declareth the contrary.

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