15:3
Four destroyers are mentioned here. The sword to kill, but even death would not be the end of the humiliation. For the dogs, birds and wild animals would drag the bodies away and then devour them. There would be no dignity. God is really rubbing it in, leaving Judah in doubt to the horror that was about to befall her. This sort of stuff offends our Western ears, but think about it for a moment. Is sin really sin? Is it something that is terrible in itself, and has terrible consequences, or does it not really matter much at all? The Bible is clear that it is the former, and we only need to look around to see that the latter answer is not at all tenable. So if sin matters, and a people are bent on continuing down a road of sin, what should God do? Should He stand idly by and just let a people carry on, even though that is going to have increasingly terrible consequences for the people themselves, and for many others? A just God could not do that. Sinful man fully deserves all the judgement we read about in this book. Thankfully, that is not the whole story, for there is an offer of salvation as well, but we are not there yet.
15:4
God then turns from the metaphorical language to the actual historical situation. Judah would become abhorrent to the nations of the earth. The people of God only have glory when they are faithful to the Lord, otherwise they are abhorrent. And the same principle applies to the church. When we stick to the word of God we will have glory, when we abandon the word of God we will be despised by the world, and many church leaders would do well to ponder on this thought. Manasseh is singled out here, and he was the worst of Judah’s kings.
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