When they go, I will spread my net on them. I will bring them down like the birds of the sky. I will chastise them, as their congregation has heard.
This passage wholly agrees with the words of Isaiah, though the form of speaking is different. It belongs then to God to bless our counsels, that they may have a prosperous and the desired success. But when God is not favorable, but even opposed to our designs, what end shall at last await us, but that whatever we may have attained shall at length be turned to our ruin? Let us then know, that whatever men do in this world is ruled by the hidden providence of God; and as God leads by his extended hand his own people, and gives his angels charge to guide them; so also he has his expanded net to catch all those who wander after their own erratic imaginations. Hence he says, Wheresoever they shall go, I will expand over them my net; and farther, I will draw them down as the birds of heaven 