common life, which is entirely destitute of accurate analogies, and is therefore, as it were, without a model; for the other nouns of this class are formed from the 3d pers. of the _Fut._--As regards, now, the substance:--Egotism, and selfishness arising out of it, are the ground of all desire for the love of that which is not God, especially in the case of those who have already known the true God; for where this is not the case, there may be, even in idolatry, a better element, which seeks for a false gratification only because it does not know the true one. From this, however, it appears, that the idolatry of the Israelites (and this is only a species of the idolatry of all those who have had opportunity to know the true God, and of whom it is true that "the last is worse than the first") was [Pg 251] much lower than that of the Gentiles, whose poets and philosophers, in part, zealously opposed the dispositions which are here expressed; compare the passages in _Manger_. Egotism is here, as it always is, folly; for it trusts in him who himself possesses only borrowed and stolen goods, which the lawful owner may, at every moment, take away from him. And in order that such folly may appear as such, and very glaringly too. He appears here indeed, and takes what He had in reality given out of His mercy, but what, according to their imagination, they had received from the idols as a reward.--The suffix in שמתים refers to the vine and fig-tree. The gardens of vines and fig-trees carefully tended, hedged and enclosed round about, are to be deprived of hedges, enclosures, and culture (καθυλομανεῖ γὰρ μὴ κλαδευομένη ἡ ἄμπελος, _Clem. Alex. Paed._ i. 1, p. 115 Sylb.), to be changed into a forest, and given over to the ravages of wild beasts; for the words "and eat them" are by no means to be referred to the fruits only. The same image of an entirely devastated country is found in Is. vii. 23 ff.; Mic. iii. 12. Ver. 15. "_And I visit upon her the days of the Baalim, to whom she burnt incense, and put on her ring and her ornament, and went after her lovers, and forgat Me, saith the Lord._"