Malachi 3:13

Your words have been stout against me, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, What have we spoken [so much] against thee?

Ver. 13. Your words have been stout against me] Or, re-enforced, or strongly confirmed. Superant me verba vestra, so some have rendered it. By your hard and hateful words you have been too hard for me, as it were. And it is as if God should say, I have given you my best advice to break off your sins, and to bring me my tithes, that I might bless you both with store and honour. But I have lost my labour; I see well, my sweet words are worse than spilt upon you, who are so hardened in your error and blasphemy, that you are still clamouring and casting out odious words against me, Proverbs 23:8. Verba quid incassum non proficientia perdo? Once before you had set your foul mouths against me, and, like so many wolves (that were wood), you held up your heads and howled out these ugly words, "Every one that doth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them," Malachi 2:17; was it possible that the wit of malice could devise so high a slander? And now you are at it again, creaking like doors that move upon rusty hinges, nay, clattering and blustering out such hellish and hideous blasphemies, as at the hearing whereof it is great wonder if the heavens sweat not, earth gape not, sea roar not, all creatures conspire not to be avenged upon you; as the very stones in the wall of Aphek turned executioners of those blasphemous Syrians, when as, being but ignorant pagans, their tongues might seem no slander.

your words have been stout against me] Yea, stouter and stouter; your wickedness frets like a canker, and increaseth still to more ungodliness, 2 Timothy 2:17. Evil men and deceivers grow worse and worse, 2 Timothy 3:13, as being given up by God, Romans 1:28, acted and agitated by the devil, Ephesians 2:2, serving divers lusts and pleasures, Titus 3:3, which to satisfy is an endless piece of business. Neither let any here say, they were but words that these are charged with, and words are but wind, &c., for words have their weight, and are marvellously provoking. Leviter volant, sed non leviter violant. The fly lightly but they do not outrage lightly. You shall find some, saith Erasmus, that if death be threatened, can despise it; but to be belied they cannot brook, nor from revenge contain themselves. "As a murdering weapon in my bones," saith David, "mine enemies reproach me," Psalms 42:10. Desperate speeches and blasphemies that impose upon the Lord anything unbeseeming his majesty, a thing common among the Jews even to this day, he can by no means do away with. See how God stomacheth such proud contumelious language, Psalms 73:11; Psa 94:4-11 Zep 1:12 Ezekiel 9:9. See how he punished it in him that bored through his great name, Leviticus 24:11. Ludovike, commonly called St Lewis, caused the lips of blasphemers to be scared with a hot iron. Philip, the French king, punished this sin with death, yea, though it were committed in a tavern. The very Turks have the Christians' blaspheming of Christ in execration; and will punish their prisoners sorely when as, through impatience or desperateness, they wound the ears of heaven: yea, the Jews, in their speculations of the causes of the strange success of the affairs of the world, assign the reason of the Turks prevailing so against the Christians to be their blasphemies; and among other scandals and lets of their conversion are all those stout words darted with hellish mouths against God in their hearing, so ordinarily and openly, by the Italians especially, who blaspheme oftener than swear, and murder more often than revile or slander. Andrew Musculus, in his discourse entitled The devil of blasphemy, hath a memorable story of a desperate dice player in Helvetia, A. D. 1553, at a town three miles distant from Lucerna; where, on a Lord's Day, three wretched fellows were playing at dice under the town wall. One of them, named Ulricus Schraeterus, having lost a great deal of money, swore that, if he lost the next cast, he would fling his dagger at the face of God. He lost it, and, in a rage, threw up his dagger with all his might toward heaven. The dagger vanished in the air, and was seen no more; five drops of blood fell down upon the table where they were playing, which could never be washed out (part of it is still kept in that town for a monument); the blasphemer, to say the best of him, was fetched away presently body and soul by the devil, with such a horrible noise, as frightened the whole town. The other two came to a miserable end shortly after. The truth of this relation is further attested by Job Fincelius and Philip Lonicerus, Theat. Histor. p. 142.

Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee?] Chald. What have we multiplied to speak before thee? As if they should say, It is not so much that we have spoken that thou shouldest make such a business of it. Nothing more ordinary with graceless men than to elevate and extenuate; great sins with them are small sins, and small sins no sins; when as every sin should swell like a toad in their eyes, and the abundant hatred thereof in their hearts should make them say all that can be said for the aggravation and detestation of it; since there is as much treason in coining pence as bigger pieces; because the supreme authority is as much violated in the one as in the other. But this sin of theirs was no peccadillo, as appeareth by the following instance: