Isaiah 2:6

A PRAYERFUL SIGH, Isaiah 2:6-9.

6. Therefore כי , not “therefore,” but for, or because, as if a sad ellipsis precedes, like this: “Well may I earnestly exhort this people.”

Thou hast forsaken… the house of Jacob This God had before often done, yet with hope, as perhaps he now had hope, of their reform. Romans 2:5. “The house of Jacob” is the family or nation of Israel. In later days, after the first deportations to Assyria of the Israelites, the names Israel and Judah, as now the names Israel and Jacob, were used interchangeably.

Replenished Or, abound in.

From the east From Syria, and Chaldea, and Persia, and Arabia. To speak generally, any or all these regions may explain the phrase “from the east.” מקדם , mikkedem, may be rendered “from the east,” or, “more than the east,” or, “from of old time.” A marginal reading has the second, and the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and other Versions, have the last. This meaning is plausible. Then the thought is, They abound, as in old time, in soothsayers; or, have become themselves “soothsayers,” like those in old time.

Like the Philistines Foreigners in the southwestern part of Palestine, who, by contiguity and association, corrupted the people of Israel.

And they please themselves They clap their hands in joy of such association; or, they join or strike hands (Gesenius and Delitzsch) with these corrupting neighbours, and form compacts with them.

The question is of much interest how idolatry, under kings so hostile to it as were Uzziah and Jotham, should have had such hold on the people. Doubtless the evil was not legally tolerated, but it pandered to natural passions; and unregenerate individuals, among whom were many men in court circles, were involved in it. Prophets zealously inveighed against the evil, as do preachers of this day against intemperance and licentiousness, because both are certain death to all true religion and political morality.