notwithstanding, when punishment has softened his heart, they bring forth their fruits.--In the words, "For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband," the ground of the exhortation is stated. Even for this reason, the words cannot be referred to the _external_ dissolution of the marriage, to the punishment of the wife; they signify rather the _moral_ dissolution of the marriage--the guilt of the wife--and are equivalent to: "our marriage is dissolved _de facto_." But in the case of the spiritual marriage, this dissolution _de facto_ is always, sooner or later, according to the greater or smaller measure of God's forbearance, followed by the dissolution _de jure_; or, to speak without figure, wherever there is sin, punishment will always follow. God bears with much weakness on the part of His people; but wherever, through this weakness, the relation to Him is essentially dissolved, He there annuls the relation altogether. The παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας applies to spiritual marriages also. The surrender of the main faculties and powers of our nature to something which is not God, stands on a par with carnal adultery. Thus, then, the connection betwixt "contend" and "for" clearly appears.--Many interpreters, viewing the clause beginning with כי as parenthetical, would connect the last words of the verse with ריבו: "Contend with your mother that she may put away." But the words are rather to be considered as parallel with the first member; for "contend," etc., is equivalent to: "seek to bring your mother to a better way," or: "let your mother reform herself." Her crime is designated first as whoredom, and then as adultery. The relation in which the two stand to one another is plainly seen from chap. i. 2, where the notion of adultery is paraphrased by: "whoring away from the Lord." By "whoredom," the _genus_--carnal crimes in general--is designated; by "adultery," the _species_, or carnal crime by which the sacred rights of another person are, at the same time, violated. The idea of whoredom, when transferred to a spiritual relation, implies chiefly the worldliness of those with whom God has not entered into any special relation; whilst the idea of adultery implies the worldliness of individuals and communities with whom God has entered into a special marriage, and whose apostasy is, for this reason, far more culpable. Leaving out of [Pg 233] view the more aggravating circumstance, the prophet first speaks of whoredom in the case of the children of Israel also.--The reason why the whoredom is here attributed to the face, and the adultery to the breasts, is well given by _Manger_: "We need not have any difficulty about seeing adultery attributed to the very face and breasts. There is a certain expressiveness in this conciseness which demonstrates, as it were before our eyes, that, in her whole deportment, the wife was given over to sensuality, and that her whole aim was only to excite to it, and to practise it.