לכן stands here with great emphasis. It points to the eternal law of God's government of the world, according to which He is sanctified _upon_ them, _in_ whom He has not been sanctified; and this so much the more, the closer was His relation to them, and the greater were His gifts. From him who is not thereby moved, they will be taken away; and nothing but his natural poverty and nakedness is left to him who was formerly so richly endowed. And well is it with him if they be taken from him at a time when he is able still to recognise the giver in Him who taketh away, and may yet deeply repent of his unthankfulness, and return to Him, as is said of Israel in iii. 5. If such be done, it is seen that the ungrateful one has not yet become an object of divine justice alone, but that divine mercy is still in store for him. The longer God allows His [Pg 244] gifts to remain with the ungrateful, the darker are their prospects for the future. That which He gave in mercy, He, in such a case, allows to remain only in anger. The words אשוב ולקחתי are commonly explained by expositors, "I shall take again," inasmuch as two verbs are frequently found together which, in their connection, are independent of each other--the one indicating only an accessory idea of the action. But this mode of expression occurs in general far more rarely than is commonly assumed; and here the explanation, "I will return and take," is to be preferred without any hesitation. Scripture says, that God appears even when He manifests Himself only in the effects of His omnipotence, justice, and love,--a mode of expression which is explained by that large measure of faith which perceives, behind the visible effect, the invisible Author of it; compare, _e.g._, Gen. xviii. 10, where the Lord says to Abraham, that He would return to him at the same period in the following year; whereas He did not return in a visible form, as then, but only in the fulfilment of His promise. Thus God had formerly appeared to Israel as the Giver; and now that they did not acknowledge Him as such. He returns as the God that takes away. "She did not know that I gave, therefore I shall return and take." That the words were to be thus understood, the prophet, as it appears, intended to indicate by the change of the tenses. It is quite natural that a verb, used as an adverb, should be as closely as possible connected with that verb which conveys the principal idea; and it would scarcely be possible to find a single instance--at all events there are not many instances--where, in such a case, a difference of the tense takes place. Altogether analogous is Jer. xii. 15: "And it shall come to pass after I have destroyed them, אשוב ורחמתים, I will return and have compassion on them;" where the sense would be very much weakened if we were to translate, "I shall _again_ have compassion." There appears to be the same design in the change of the tenses in iii. 5 also. What is there