Repayeth them that hate him to their face - i. e., punishes His enemies in their own proper persons.

And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them,.... Openly, publicly, and at once, they not being able to make any resistance. Onkelos interprets it in their lifetime, and so Jarchi which agrees with the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem: "or to his face"; (f) the face of God; that is, he will punish them that hate him to his face, who are audacious, bold, impudent sinners; sinners before the Lord, as the men of Sodom were, Genesis 13:13,

he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face; not defer the execution of his judgment and vengeance, which may seem to slumber and linger, but will quickly and openly bring it upon the sinner; this also the Chaldee paraphrases explain as before.

(f) "in faciem ejus", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Vatablus, Fagius; so Ainsworth.

And repayeth {e} them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.

(e) Meaning revealed, or in this life.

7:10 Them that hate him - Not only those who hate him directly and properly, (for so did few or none of the Israelites to whom he here speaks,) but those who hate him by construction and consequence; those who hate and oppose his people, and word, those who wilfully persist in the breach of God's commandments. To their face - That is, openly, and so as they shall see it, and not be able to avoid it. Slack - So as to delay it beyond the fit time or season for vengeance, yet withal he is long - suffering, and slow to anger.

7:1-11 Here is a strict caution against all friendship and fellowship with idols and idolaters. Those who are in communion with God, must have no communication with the unfruitful works of darkness. Limiting the orders to destroy, to the nations here mentioned, plainly shows that after ages were not to draw this into a precedent. A proper understanding of the evil of sin, and of the mystery of a crucified Saviour, will enable us to perceive the justice of God in all his punishments, temporal and eternal. We must deal decidedly with our lusts that war against our souls; let us not show them any mercy, but mortify, and crucify, and utterly destroy them. Thousands in the world that now is, have been undone by ungodly marriages; for there is more likelihood that the good will be perverted, than that the bad will be converted. Those who, in choosing yoke-fellows, keep not within the bounds of a profession of religion, cannot promise themselves helps meet for them.