Isaiah 1:4

Ah sinful nation,..... Or "sinning nation" (y); that was continually sinning, doing nothing else but sin, the reverse of what they were chosen to be, Deuteronomy 7:6.

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

Ah: this particle implies both his wonder, and anger, and grief, and shame that they were such. Laden with iniquity, Heb. of heaviness of iniquity, i.e. of heavy or great sins; for heavy is commonly put for great or grievous, as 30:27. Laden not with the sense of sin, as , but with the guilt and bondage of sin. A seed of evil-doers; the children of wicked parents, whose guilt they inherit, and whose evil example they follow. That are corrupters, Heb. that corrupt, to wit, themselves, or their ways, or others by their counsel and example. Or, that destroy themselves and their land by their wickedness. They have forsaken the Lord, not in profession, but in practice and reality, neglecting or corrupting his worship, refusing his yoke and conduct. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger; they have lived as if it were their great design and business to provoke him. They are gone away backward; instead of proceeding forward, and growing in grace, which was their duty, they are all fallen from their former professions, and grown worse and worse, and have impudently turned their backs upon me.

Isaiah 1:4 Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.Ver. 4. Ah sinflul notion.] Hoi goi chote. He beginneth his complaint with a sigh, as well he might, when he saw that the better God was to them, the worse they were to him; like springs of water, which are then coldest when the sun is hottest; like the Thracian flint, which is said to burn with water, and to be quenched with oil, or like that country where drought maketh dirt, and rain dust. Ah gens peccatrix! Oh, thou that art wholly made up of mischief, as Aaron once said of their forefathers in the wilderness, that they were "wholly set upon wickedness," and as the prophet saith, "What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?" A people laden with iniquity] Great and grievous offenders, guilty of many and mighty (or long) sins, quorum amplitudine praegravanfur, yet not sensible of their burden; not heavyladen, nor labouring to be delivered of that hedgehog that woundeth and teareth them in their tender inside. A seed of evildoers.] A race of rebels, a seed of serpents: Mali corvi malum ovum: such as were as good at resisting the Holy Ghost as ever their fathers had been; generation after generation they held it out, and were no changelings then, neither are to this day. Children that are corrupters.] Or, Destroyers, dingthrifts, ασωτοι quasi ασωστοι, destroy goods, such as the Roman prodigal, who gloried that of a large patrimony left him by his parents, he had now left himself nothing praeter coelum et caenum; or that other in the Gospel, who had drawn much of his portion through his throat, and spent the rest on harlots. Lo! such ill husbands for their souls were these Jews here spoken of, seipsis assidue facti deteriores, while they woefully wasted their time and strength in the pursuit of their lusts: "cursed children." They have forsaken the Lord.] Which is such a foul enormity, as good Jeremiah thinks the very heaven sweateth at, and the earth groaneth under. They have provoked unto anger.] As if they had a mind to wrestle a fall, and try masteries with him. The Vulgate rendereth it, They have blasphemed. They are gone away backward.] A lienaverunt se retrorsum, certatim exardescentes in apostasiam; as the moon when fullest of light getteth farther off from the sun. They had turned upon God the back and not the face, by a shameful apostasy, even then when they frequently trod his courts, and departed not thence, haply, any otherwise than the Jews at this day do, out of their synagogues with their faces still toward the ark, like crabs going backward. Siccitas dat lutum, imbres pulverem. - Plin, Gens quae non nisi peccare didicit. - Scult. Secura et petulans. - Piscat. Luke 15:30.

(4) Ah, sinful nation . . .—The Hebrew interjection is, like our English “Ha!” the expression of indignation rather than of pity. A seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters.—The first phrase in the Hebrew idiom does not mean “the progeny of evil-doers,” but those who, as a seed or brood, are made up of such. (Comp. Isaiah 14:20; Isaiah 65:23.) The word “children” (better, as in Isaiah 1:2, sons) once more emphasises the guilt of those who ought to have been obedient. They have forsaken the Lord . . .—The three verbs paint the several stages of the growth in evil. Men first forsake, then spurn, then openly apostatise. (Comp. Luke 16:13). In the “Holy One of Israel” we have the Divine name on which Isaiah most delights to dwell, and which had been impressed on his mind by the Trisagion, which accompanied his first call to the office of a prophet (Isaiah 6:3). The thought expressed by the name is that all ideas of consecration, purity, and holiness are gathered up in God. The term occurs fourteen times in the first part of Isaiah, and sixteen times in the second. A corrupt people needed to be reminded ever more and more of the truth which the name asserted.

Verse 4. Ah sinful nation - "Degenerate"] Five MSS., one of them ancient, read משחתים moschathim, without the first י yod, in hophal corrupted, not corrupters. See the same word in the same form, and in the same sense, Proverbs 25:26. Are corrupters - "Are estranged"] Thirty-two MSS., five ancient, and two editions, read נזורו nazoru; which reading determines the word to be from the root זור zur, to alienate, not from נזר nazar, to separate; so Kimchi understands it. See also Annotat. in Noldium, 68. They are gone away backward - "They have turned their backs upon him."] So Kimchi explains it: "they have turned unto him the back and not the face." See Jeremiah 2:27; Jeremiah 7:24. I have been forced to render this line paraphrastically; as the verbal translation, "they are estranged backward," would have been unintelligible.

4–9. The prophet speaks.

Ah! sinful nation - The word rendered ‘ah!’ - הוי hôy - is not a mere exclamation, expressing astonishment. It is rather an interjection denouncing threatening, or punishment.

4. Ah — The exclamation denotes mental pain, and answers to our word alas! The adjective of the text is an active participle in the Hebrew. Seed of evildoers — Offspring of wicked immediate ancestors.