Isaiah 57:17 - Exposition

For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth . Among the sins that angered God most against the Jews of the later kingdom of Judah was their covetousness—that desire of unjust gain which led them continually to oppress their weaker brethren, to remove their neighbours' landmarks, to harass them with lawsuits, to obtain from the courts corrupt judgments against them, and so to strip them of their inheritances (see Isaiah 1:15-23 ; Isaiah 3:5 , Isaiah 3:14 , Isaiah 3:15 ; Isaiah 5:8 , Isaiah 5:23 ; Jeremiah 6:13 ; Ezekiel 33:31 , etc.). This was far from being their only sin; but it was their besetting sin, and it led on to a number of others. It would seem even to have been the principal cause of those judicial murders with which they are so constantly taxed by the prophets ( Isaiah 1:15 , Isaiah 1:21 : Isaiah 33:15 ; Isaiah 59:3 ; Jeremiah 2:34 ; Jeremiah 19:4 ; Ezekiel 7:23 ; Ezekiel 11:6 ; Hosea 4:2 ; Micah 3:10 ; Micah 7:2 , etc. ) . Isaiah selects the sin of covetousness here, as typical or representative of the entire class of Judah's besetting sins—the most striking indication of that alienation of their hearts from God, which constituted their real guilt, and was the true cause of their punishment. And smote him . The form of the verb marks repeated action. God gave Judah many warning's before the final catastrophe. He punished Judah by the hand of Sargon, by that of Sennacherib ( 2 Kings 18:14-16 ), by that of Manasseh ( 2 Chronicles 33:11 ), by that of Pharaoh-Necho ( 2 Chronicles 35:20-24 ), by that of the Syrians, the Moabites and the Ammonites ( 2 Kings 24:2 ), and others, during the hundred and forty years which intervened between the accession of Hezekiah and the completion of the Captivity. I hid me (comp. Isaiah 8:17 ; Isaiah 54:8 ).