Let them be blotted out of the book of life,.... Which some understand of this animal life, or of the catalogue of living saints; of their being not written among the living in Jerusalem, or in the writing of the house of Israel, Isa 4:3.
The Targum is,"let them he blotted out of the book of the memory of the living.''Let their names rot and perish, being buried in everlasting oblivion. Aben Ezra interprets this book of the heavens; where, he says, all things that should come to pass were written, at the time they were created; see Lu 10:20.
But this is the book of divine predestination or election, often in the New Testament called the book of life; in which the names of some persons are written, and others not, Php 4:3; so called, not with respect to the present life, and the affairs of it, which belong to the book of Providence; but with respect to the life of the world to come, or eternal life, as Kimchi explains it.
It is no other than God's ordination or foreappointment of men to eternal life; which being called a book, and names written in it, show that election is personal or particular; the exact knowledge God has of his chosen ones; his great care of them, and value for them; his constant remembrance of them, and the certainty of their salvation; for such whose names are written here in reality can never be blotted out: this would be contrary to the unchangeableness of God, the firmness of his purposes, and the safety of his people.
Wherefore the design of this imprecation is, that those persons who had, in their own conceits, and in the apprehensions of others, a name in this book; that it might appear, both to themselves and others, they had none, by the awful ruin and destruction that should be brought upon them;and not be written with the righteous; neither in the book of life with them; by which it appears, that to be blotted out, and not be written, are the same: nor in a Gospel church state; so they were the branches broken off: nor be among them at the resurrection of the just, and in the judgment day.