IV. He prays that God would turn his hand against these wicked people, and not suffer them to prosper always, though they had prospered long: "Let some judgment come to pull them out of this fat pasture as sheep for the slaughter, that it may appear their long prosperity was but like the feeding of lambs in a large place, to prepare them for the day of slaughter," Hos. iv. 16. God suffered them to prosper that by their pride and luxury they might fill up the measure of their iniquity and so be ripened for destruction; and therefore he thinks it a piece of necessary justice that they should fall into mischief themselves, because they had done so much mischief to others, that they should be pulled out of their land, because they had brought ruin upon the land, and the longer they continued in it the more hurt they did, as the plagues of their generation (v. 4): "How long shall the land mourn. (as it does under the judgments of God inflicted upon it) for the wickedness of those that dwell therein? Lord, shall those prosper themselves that ruin all about them?" 1. See here what the judgment was which the land was now groaning under: The herbs of every field wither (the grass is burnt up and all the products of the earth fail), and then it follows of course, the beasts are consumed, and the birds, 1 Kings xviii. 5. This was the effect of a long drought, or want of rain, which happened, as it should seem, at the latter end of Josiah's reign and the beginning of Jehoiakim's; it is mentioned ch. iii. 3, viii. 13, ix. 10, 12, and more fully afterwards, ch. xiv. If they would have been brought to repentance by this less judgment, the greater would have been prevented. Now why was it that this fruitful land was turned into barrenness, but for the wickedness of those that dwelt therein? Ps. xvii. 34. Therefore the prophet prays that these wicked people might die for their own sin, and that the whole nation might not suffer for it. 2. See here what was the language of their wickedness: They said, He shall not see our last end, either, (1.) God himself shall not. Atheism is the root of hypocrisy. God is far from their reins, though near in their mouth, because they say, How doth God know? Ps. lxxiii. 11; Job xxii. 13. He knows not what way we take nor what it will end in. Or, (2.) Jeremiah shall not see our last end; whatever he pretends, when he asks us what shall be in the end hereof he cannot himself foresee it. They look upon him as a false prophet. Or, "whatever it is, he shall not live to see it, for we will be the death of him," ch. xi. 21. Note, [1.] Men's setting their latter end at a great distance, or looking upon it as uncertain, is at the bottom of all their wickedness, Lam. i. 9. [2.] The whole creation groans under the burden of the sin of man, Rom. viii. 22. It is for this that the earth mourns (so it may be read); cursed is the ground for thy sake.