Joel 3:5 KJV
Because ye have taken my silver and my gold,
and have carried into your temples
my goodly pleasant (desirable) things:
My silver and my gold
God’s silver and gold, Philistines and Arabians had carried off all the treasures of King Jehoram’s house (2 Chronicles 21:16-17). Compare also 1 Kings 15:18, 2 Kings 12:18, 2 Kings 14:14, for the spoiling of the treasures of the temple and the king’s palace in Judah by Syria.
Into your temples
It was customary among the heathen to hang up in the idol temples some of the spoils of war as presents to their gods.
They had unjustly seized God’s silver and gold, by which some understand the wealth of Israel.
The silver and gold which God’s people had He calls His, because they had received it from Him and devoted it to Him; and whosoever robbed them, God took it as if they had robbed Him and would make reprisals accordingly.
Those who take away the estates of good men for well-doing will be found guilty of sacrilege; they take God’s silver and gold.
But it seems rather to be meant of the vessels and treasures of the temple, which God here calls his goodly pleasant things, precious and desirable to Him and all that are His.
These they carried into their temples as trophies of their victory over Israel, thinking that therein they triumphed over Israel’s God, and that their idols triumphed over Him.
Thus the ark was put in Dagon’s temple. Thus they did unjustly. “What have you to do with me (joel 3:4), with my people; what wrong have they done you? What provocation have they given you?
You had nothing to do with them, and yet you do all this against them.
Devices are devised against the quiet in the land, and those offended and harmed that are harmless and inoffensive: Will you render me a recompence?’’
Can they pretend that either God or his people have done them any injury, for which they may justify themselves by the law of retaliation in doing them these mischiefs?
Note, It is no new thing for those who have been very civil and obliging to their neighbours to find them very unkind and unneighbourly and for those who do no injuries to suffer many.
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