Isaiah 55:3

Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, [even] the sure mercies of David.

Ver. 3. Incline your ear.] Hear with all your might. Alphonsus, King of Arragon, is renowned for his attentive hearing; so is our King Edward VI, who usually stood and took notes on all the sermon. Origen chideth his hearers for nothing so much as for their seldom coming to hear God's Word, and for their careless and heedless hearing it when they did come; whence their slow growth in godliness.

Hear, and your souls shall live.] God hath ordained - as it were to cross the devil - that as death entered into the world through the ear, by our first parents listening to that old man-slayer, so should life enter into the soul by the same door, as it were. "The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." Joh 5:25 The Romanists hold not hearing so absolutely needful - the mass only they make a work of duty, but the going to sermons but a matter of convenience, and such as is left free to men's leisures and opportunities without imputation of sin. a

And I will make an everlasting covenant with you.] Heb., I will cut out unto them a covenant of perpetuity. A covenant is a cluster of promises solemnly made over.

Even the sure mercies of David.] Or, Firm, faithful. The Greek Act 13:34 hath it, "The holy things," or the "venerable things of David," that is, of Christ, for the ratifying and assuring whereof it was necessary that Christ should rise from death and enter into glory; for which purpose Paul allegeth this text. See Acts 13:34 .

a Spec. Europ.