Mercy - Mercy denotes all benignity, charity, and readiness to do good to others: truth or faithfulness respects all those duties which we owe to God or man, which we have special obligation from the rules of justice. Bind them - Like a chain, wherewith persons adorn their necks. Table - In thy mind and heart, in which all God's commands are to be received and engraven.
Understanding - Whereby to know thy duty, and to discern between good and evil. Of God - Grace or favour with God, and that understanding which is good in God's sight.
Trust - Wholly rely upon God's promises and providences. Lean not - Under this one kind of carnal confidence, he understands all other confidence in bodily strength, wealth, or friends.
Substance - Lay out thy estate not to please thyself, but to glorify God. First - fruits - Or, with the chief or best; which answers to the first - fruits under the law.
Despise not - Either by making light of it, or not being duly affected with it; or by accounting it an unnecessary thing: but rather esteem it a privilege and favour from God. Weary - Neither think it tedious or hard, but endure it with patience and chearfulness.
A tree - A pledge of everlasting life. He alludes to the tree of life, and intimates, that this is the only restorer of that life which we have lost by sin.
Be not - Thou shalt not be afraid. Sudden - For sudden and unexpected evils are most frightful. And fear is here put for the evils feared. Desolation - Which cometh upon the wicked.
With - hold not - Do not deny it, but readily and chearfuly impart it. Good - Any thing which is good, either counsel, comfort, reproof, or the good things of the present life. Due - That is, to all men, by that great and sovereign law of love.
Abomination - Therefore sooner or later he must be miserable. The righteous - They are God's friends, to whom he imparts the favours and comforts to which other men are strangers.
