LECTURE ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTIETH
THE, Prophet in the sixth verse compares God's people to lost sheep: he therefore says, that the Jews wandered on the mountains and went from mountain to hill. He throws the blame on the shepherds, by whom the miserable people had been led astray. Notwithstanding, God does not extenuate the fault of the people; nor did he accuse the pastors as though their wickedness and perfidy absolved the people; but on the contrary, he commends the greatness of his own grace, that he had mercy on a flock that was lost and without hope. We now then understand the design of the Prophet when he thus spoke in the person of God, My people have become lost sheep, and the shepherds have seduced them, on the mountains have they made them to go astray, from mountain to hill have they gone; and he says, that they had forgotten their lying down; 1 for when there is no fixed station, the sheep have no place to rest. Flocks, we know, return in the evening to their folds. But the Prophet says that the Jews, when scattered, forgot their lying down, because they had no settled habitation. It afterwards follows, --
6. Lost sheep have become my people; Their shepherds have caused them to err, Having turned them here and there on the mountains; From mountain to hill have they gone; They have forgotten their resting-place.
The meaning of Mybbws is given by the Sept. and Vulg., "causing them to wander;" the verb bs is to turn; being here a reduplicate, it means to turn much, or again and again, or here and there; and this is confirmed by what follows -- they went, through the teaching of their pastors, from "mountain to hill," that is, from one form of idolatry to another; and "forgotten their resting-place," which was God. -- Ed.