The woe against Israel.
This is the last woe and the greatest. "The thunder cloud of God's judgments having passed over all the nations round about, and even discharged the fire from heaven on Judah and Jerusalem, settles at last on Israel" (Pusey). Just as God's honour suffered specially by their sin, so does his heart suffer specially in their punishment. And so, whilst compendious justice may be meted out to heathen nations, the destruction of the chosen people cannot be denounced without regretful enlargement on the circumstances of the case.
I. COVETOUSNESS PUTS A CONTEMPTUOUS ESTIMATE ON HUMAN LIFE. "They sell the righteous for money, and the poor for a pair of shoes." This may be either a commercial or a judicial transaction, but in either case the principle involved is the same. An undue estimate of wrong involves an inadequate estimate of all else. Wealth becomes the one good, and gain the one pursuit. Human life is as nothing in comparison with personal aggrandizement to the extent of even a paltry sum. Officialism, to which the death of a human being is mainly a question of a burial or registration fee, is not an altogether unheard of thing. This principle has a bearing, not only on murder and the perversion of justice, but on slavery, oppression, the opium and liquor traffics, and every method of making money at the expense of human life or health or well being. The extent to which such things prevail, and the tens of thousands of human lives annually sacrificed for gain, is a startling commentary on the maxim that "the love of money is a root of all evil."
II. THE DOMINATING VICE OF A COMMUNITY MAKES ALL THE OTHER VICES ITS TRIBUTARIES. Israel's besetting sin as against their fellow men was covetousness.
1. This was inhuman. It bore hardest on the poor. These, being helpless, were its easiest victims. Humanity was put out of the question, and the unspeakably greater suffering involved in making the same gain off the poor, as compared with the rich, was no deterrent whatever. Gain, though it be the very heart's blood of miserable fellow creatures, was all they had an eye for or a heart to consider.
2. It was ungodly. It made special victims of the righteous. This course was partly utilitarian, no doubt. The righteous might be expected to submit to the maximum of wrong with the minimum of retaliation. But it was profane as well. The wicked hate good, and all in whom it is found. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." It was natural, therefore, that a worldly act should assume an ungodly character where opportunity arose.
3. It was devilish. "Who pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor." It rejoiced in all the incidental evils which oppression of the poor involved. When those it impoverished were levelled in the dust of misery and degradation, this was the sort of thing it panted after. One side of a man's moral nature cannot become vitiated without affecting the other sides. The vices have an affinity for one another, and tend to come together in groups. If evil gets in the little finger of one vice, the intrusion of the whole body is only a question of time.
III. WHEN MEN GET SATED WITH SIMPLE SINS, THEY RESORT TO COMPOUND SINS FOR A NEW SENSATION. Sin does not satisfy any time, and the longer it is followed up it satisfies the less. In the commission of it appetite increases, and relish diminishes pari passu, and so the candle of actual enjoyment is being shortened at both ends. One device in mitigation of this is to increase the dose, and another to multiply the ingredients. Reduced to the latter expedient, Israel mixed:
1. Carousal with uncleanness. The two things often go together. They are the two chief indulgences craved for by carnal appetite. The one, moreover, helps to produce the other. A Falstaff who combines the drunkard with the libertine is the typical debauchee.
3. Uncleanness with incest. "A man and his father go to the same girl." This act was equivalent to incest, which was a capital crime according to the Mosaic code (Le 18:7, 15; 20:11). It outdid the heathen themselves, among whom this crime was not so much as named (1 Corinthians 5:1). An apostate is always the vilest sinner (2 Peter 2:21, 2 Peter 2:22).
3. Robbery with all three. "Stretch themselves upon pawned clothes." This was robbery in two forms. They retained pawned clothes overnight, contrary to the Law of Moses (Exodus 22:26, Exodus 22:27), and in further violation of it used them to sleep on (Deuteronomy 24:12, Deuteronomy 24:13). "And drink the wine of the amerced." Again a double injustice. The fine was unjustly inflicted, and then dishonestly appropriated.
4. Profanity with the entire troupe. "In order to profane my holy Name." Incest was the guiltiest, but as a carnal indulgence it had no advantage over any other form of uncleanness, It must, therefore, have been sought out because of its very horrors, and with a view to the profanation of God's holy flame, making the "members the members of an harlot" "Before every altar," i.e. at Beersheba and Dan, where Jehovah was worshipped after a fashion (see Keil), and therefore in determinate contempt of God. "In the house of their God," not the idol god probably, but the God of Israel. "In the time of Jeroboam II there was no heathenish idolatry in the kingdom of the ten tribes, or at any rate it was not publicly maintained" (Keil). But the sin, though less complicated, was scarcely less heinous than if idolatry had been a part of it. It was done of set purpose to dishonour him, and in order to this the place selected for the commission of it was his house, and the occasion the celebration of his worship. What a horrible exhibition of extreme and multiplex depravity! "They condensed sin. By a sort of economy in the toil of sinning they blended many sins in one … and in all the express breach of God's commandments" (Pusey).