Isaiah 1:21

How is the faithful city become a harlot!.... The city of Jerusalem, in which were the temple, and the pure worship of God, and was in the tribe of Judah, which ruled with God, and was very faithful

How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. How is the faithful city become an harlot! "Faithful" - as a wife (Isaiah 54:5; Isaiah 62:5; Hosea 2:19-20).

How, a note of admiration at so strange, and sad, and sudden a change, is the faithful city, Jerusalem, which in the reign of former kings was faithful to God, become an harlot is filled with idolatry, which is commonly called whoredom. It was full of judgment; judgment was duly and truly executed in all its courts. Righteousness lodged in it; it was famous for being the seat of justice, which did not only pass through it, like a wayfaring man, but had its settled abode in it. But now murderers; under that one gross kind he comprehends all sorts of unrighteous men and practices, as may be gathered by the opposition. Only their connivance at that horrid crime of murder is noted, to assure us that Other crimes of a lower nature were not only unpunished, but even encouraged.

Isaiah 1:21 How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.Ver. 21. How is the faithful city.] Here beginneth, as some think, a new sermon; and it beginneth, as Jeremiah’ s Lamentations do, with an Ecack, "How!" a particle of admiration mixed with grief - q.d., Proh pudor! proh dolor! Oh shameful! oh doleful! What a strange business is this! and how unworthily is this matter carried! Here is a city so altered that ye can scarce know her to be the same. Ye may seek Jerusalem in Jerusalem and not find her; tota est iam Roma lupanar. See Ezekiel 16:15; Ezekiel 16:23; Ezekiel 23:3-21. Become an harlot?] In meretricem; not a privy harlot only, but a prostituted harlot, a very prostibulum meretrix meretricissima, utpote quae cubile dilatavit Tibias devaricavit Such a trite harlot is the great whore of Babylon at this day, whose faithfulness was once famous all the world over. But now, O quantum haec Niobe! One of her own sons once complained that of gold she was become silver, of silver brass, and that she was ready to degenerate into dirt, and worse. It was full of judgment.] Top full. Sad that it was so. Fuimus Troes. It is a misery to have been happy. Righteousness lodged there.] Not in Melchizedek’ s days only, who was king of righteousness, according to his name, and king also of Salem, afterwards called Jerusalem, but also in the reigns of David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, and other good princes. But now no such matter - nay, the contrary, like as the Prince of Orange his country is fertile of all fruits save oranges, whence the French proverb, En Orenge it n’ y a point de oranges. But now murderers.] Hierapolis was become a very Poneropolis, the city of God a den of thieves, or, as the Papists maliciously say of Geneva, a professed sanctuary of roguery. By murderers here may be meant persecutors of the pious, and oppressors of the poor man, whose livelihood is his life. A poor man in his house is like a snail in his shell; crush that, and you kill him. Nota et admirantis, et deplorantis. Mantuan. Ex aurea factam argenteam, ex argentea ferream, ex ferrea terream, superesse ut in stercus abiret. - Theod. Urias Augustinianus, circa A.D. 1414.

(21) How is the faithful city become an harlot! . . .—The opening word, as in Lamentations 1:1, is the key-note of an elegiac wail, which opens a new section. The idea of prostitution as representing apostasy from Jehovah was involved in the thought that Israel was the bride whom He had wooed and won (Hosea 1-3; Jeremiah 2:2). The imagery was made more impressive by the fact that actual prostitution entered so largely into the ritual of many of the forms of idolatry to which the Israelites were tempted (Numbers 25:1-2). So Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16:1-14) develops the symbolism with an almost terrible fulness. So our Lord spoke of the Pharisees as an “adulterous generation” (Matthew 12:39). The fact that Hosea, an earlier contemporary, had been led to tell how he had been taught the truth thus set forth by a living personal experience, is not without significance in its bearing on the genesis of Isaiah’s thoughts. Righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.—Better, assassins. The word implies not casual homicide, but something like the choice of murder and robbery as a profession. Hosea (Hosea 6:9) had painted a like picture as true of Samaria. The traveller who sojourned in Jerusalem, the poor who lived there, were exposed to outrage and murder; and all this was passing before men’s eyes at the very time when they were boasting, as it were, of their “glorious reformation.”

Verse 21. Become a harlot] See before, the Discourse on the Prophetic Style; and see Lowth's Comment on the place, and De Sacr. Poes. Hebr. Prael. xxxi.

21. a harlot] The idea conveyed is perhaps rather deterioration of character than infidelity to the marriage bond with Jehovah, an image not used by Isaiah (as by Hos.). righteousness (çédeq) is the principle of right action in individuals or the community; judgment (mishpâṭ ?) the embodiment of that principle in judicial decisions, use and wont, and the like. These qualities constituted the “faithfulness,” trustworthiness, of the city.

How is - This is an expression of deploring, or lamenting. It indicates that that had occurred which was matter of grief.

AN AGAINST THE CITY, Isaiah 1:21-31.21-23. By a Hebrew character called Piskah, after Isaiah 1:20 a long pause is indicated.