(4) Tasted the good word of God

The emphasis must be placed on good. The law was holy, just, and true. But it was not the good word of God—that word is the gospel of His grace. We may again find help in suggesting to ourselves what this really was to a Jew, by thinking of a poor soul, who has heard only, Do this and thou shalt live, and the strains of legal teaching continually, finding himself in a place where his soul has a taste of the full, free gospel. To feed on such good things would be new indeed. And, perhaps, no little of the difficulty in understanding this passage is to be traced to the fact that those who are tried by it, are deeply influenced by legal teaching.