But why, it may be asked, were these offences condemned in the Philistines particularly? Were not the Jews also addicted to pride, avarice, and worldly ambition? No doubt they were so; and the prophecy being addressed to them, it appears that the admonition was expressly intended for their use.
Pride was even less excusable in the Jews, who could find no sanction for it in their religion; while this was the very basis of Pagan morality; the pedestal on which honour was erected; that idol of self-estimation, the highest of Pagan virtues. These vices were therefore more appropriately denounced in the Philistines, as peculiarly belonging to them, though spreading, by contagion, to the Jews; and if punishable in the former, how could they be excusable in the latter?
The mind of the Christian reader will naturally revert to the pride which revolted at the idea of a meek and humble Messiah, and caused the Jews to reject him. But that cannot be the question here; for the Jews are not here pointed out as the objects of Divine displeasure; nor is any intimation hitherto given of their offence; and that of its punishment could not surely precede it. The feeling might indeed be there, and a salutary warning of its being displeasing in the sight of Heaven, and of the fatal consequences about to result from it, seems here intended; but the penalty was not incurred till the overt act was committed, and to foretell the punishment before the offence itself was intimated, would have been a prophetical solecism. As we proceed, we shall find, in its proper place, due notice taken both of the one and the other.
In the next verse we find these denunciations, coupled with promises of mercy and redemption to the remaining Gentiles, verse 7, _But I will take away his blood from out of his mouth; and his pollution from between his teeth; and he that remaineth, even he shall be for our God_; that is, the remaining Gentiles shall have their sins forgiven, their pollution washed away, they shall be redeemed from the darkness of Paganism, and reclaimed to the worship of the true God;
_And he shall be as a chief in Judah, Ekron, as well as the Jebusite_; that is, he (the remaining Gentile) shall attain thereby to a full participation with the Jew, in all the spiritual blessings promised in the Messiah's kingdom.