| Geneva Study Bible You {a} only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. (a) I have only chosen you to be mine among all other people, and yet you have forsaken me. Wesley's Notes 3:2 Know - Chosen, adopted to be my peculiar ones. Therefore - Because you have all these obligations and abused all these mercies. King James Translators' Notes punish: Heb. visit upon Scofield Reference Notes [3] therefore It is noteworthy that Jehovah's controversy with the Gentile cities which hated Israel is brief: "I will send a fire." But Israel had been brought into the place of privilege and Song of responsibility, and the Lord's indictment is detailed and unsparing. Cf. Mt 11:23 Lk 12:47,48. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary 2. You only have I known-that is, acknowledged as My people, and treated with peculiar favor (Ex 19:5; De 4:20). Compare the use of "know," Ps 1:6; 144:3; Joh 10:14; 2Ti 2:19. therefore I will punish-the greater the privileges, the heavier the punishment for the abuse of them; for to the other offenses there is added, in this case, ingratitude. When God's people do not glorify Him, He glorifies Himself by punishing them. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 3:1-8 The distinguishing favours of God to us, if they do not restrain from sin, shall not exempt from punishment. They could not expect communion with God, unless they first sought peace with him. Where there is not friendship, there can be no fellowship. God and man cannot walk together, except they are agreed. Unless we seek his glory, we cannot walk with him. Let us not presume on outward privileges, without special, sanctifying grace. The threatenings of the word and providence of God against the sin of man are certain, and certainly show that the judgments of God are at hand. Nor will God remove the affliction he has sent, till it has done its work. The evil of sin is from ourselves, it is our own doing; but the evil of trouble is from God, and is his doing, whoever are the instruments. This should engage us patiently to bear public troubles, and to study to answer God's meaning in them. The whole of the passage shows that natural evil, or troubles, and not moral evil, or sin, is here meant. The warning given to a careless world will increase its condemnation another day. Oh the amazing stupidity of an unbelieving world, that will not be wrought upon by the terrors of the Lord, and that despise his mercies! | 
