Isaiah 57:3

"But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of adulterers and the harlot. Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make yea wide mouth, and put out the tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood?"

This is a reference to the mocking behavior of the unbelieving Jews who made up the majority of that pre-exilic generation, and back to the times of Isaiah who wrote these words. As McGuiggan wrote: "This looks exactly like the times of Manasseh. There is no reason to believe, with Willis, that this is a prophetic description of the post-exilic community. There is no evidence that the post-exilic community of the Jews were involved in the idolatry described in this chapter. Harrison is surely correct when he wrote that `Canaanite Baalism was a long dead issue for the Jews by the time that the post-exilic period rolled around.'"[6] We say "Amen" to this.

Hailey's paraphrase of these lines is as follows:

"The citizens of Judah are children of idolatry, the offspring of people who forsook Jehovah for the witchcraft of the heathen; and they are the posterity of spiritual adulterers who went `whoring' after false gods. The rejection of Jehovah had resulted in apostasy and excessive wickedness."[7]

As Cheyne suggested, the implied question which the Lord directed to the mockers is this, "Judge if ye are not yourselves fitter objects of scorn than those godly persons whom you are mocking!"[8]