Where is your king now, that he may save you in all your cities? And your judges, of whom you said, 'Give me a king and princes?'
Hence ‘I will be;’ that is, “Though the Israelites rail against me, that I do not pursue my usual course of kindness, it is yet most false; for I remain ever the same, and am always ready to show kindness to men; for I do not, as I have elsewhere declared, forsake the works of my hands, (Psalms 138:8.) Seeing then that I thus continue my favour towards men, it must be that the way to my favour is closed up by their wickedness. Let them therefore examine themselves, when they cry and I answer not. When in their evils they in a manner pine away, and find no relief, let them acknowledge it to be their own fault; for I would have made myself the same as ever I have been, and they would have found me a deliverer, had not a change taken place in them.” We now comprehend the meaning of the Prophet in the ninth verse, and as to the expression, אהי, aei, I will be, in the verse which follows. 