Commentaires bibliques

The sins of Israel are sins in words and deeds. “For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips speak lies, your tongue murmurs wickedness.” The verb גּאל , to spot (see Isaiah 63:3), is a later softening down of גּעל (e.g., 2 Samuel 1:21); and in the place of the niphal נגאל (Zephaniah 3:1), we have here, as in Lamentations 4:14, the double passive form נגאל , compounded of niphal and pual. The post-biblical nithpaël, compounded of the niphal and the hithpael, is a mixed form of the same kind, though we also meet with it in a few biblical passages (Deuteronomy 21:8; Proverbs 27:15; Ezekiel 23:48). The verb hâgâh (lxx μελετᾶ ) combines the two meanings of “thought” (meditation or reflection), and of a light low “expression,” half inward half outward.

return to '

This evil doing of theirs rises even to hatred, the very opposite of that love which is well-pleasing to God. “Their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of wickedness; wasting and destruction are in their paths.” Paul has interwoven this passage into his description of the universal corruption of morals, in Romans 3:15-17. The comparison of life to a road, and of a man's conduct to walking, is very common in proverbial sayings. The prophet has here taken from them both his simile and his expressions. We may see from Isaiah 59:7, that during the captivity the true believers were persecuted even to death by their countrymen, who had forgotten God. The verbs ירוּצוּ and וימהרוּ (the proper reading, with m etheg, not m unach, under the מ ) depict the pleasure taken in wickedness, when the conscience is thoroughly lulled to sleep.

return to '

Their whole nature is broken up into discord. “The way of peace they know not, and there is no right in their roads: they make their paths crooked: every one who treads upon them knows no peace.” With דּר ך , the way upon which a man goes, the prophet uses interchangeably (here and in Isaiah 59:7) מסלּה , a high-road thrown up with an embankment; מעגּל (with the plural in ı̂m and ôth ), a carriage-road; and נתיבה , a footpath formed by the constant passing to and fro of travellers. Peaceable conduct, springing form a love of peace, and aiming at producing peace, is altogether strange to them; no such thing is to be met with in their path as the recognition of practice of right: they make their paths for themselves ( להם , dat. ethicus) , i.e., most diligently, twisting about; and whoever treads upon them ( bâh , neuter, as in Isaiah 27:4), forfeits all enjoyment of either inward or outward peace. Shâlōm is repeated significantly, in Isaiah's peculiar style, at the end of the verse. The first strophe of the prophecy closes here: it was from no want of power or willingness on the part of God, that He had not come to the help of His people; the fault lay in their own sins.

return to '