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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
By swearing; either falsely or profanely, or cursing and wishing evil to one; instead of truth here is perjury; instead of compassion here is execration and evil-speaking.
Lying of all kinds; affirming of falsehoods, denying of truths, defrauding, lessening good, and representing it what it is not, greatening what is in others ill, and so flattering in some cases, and defaming in other cases, &c.
Killing: though God hath forbidden all kinds and degrees of murder, this people, through ignorance of God, do fill the land with murders, either open or secret; by cruelty withholding relief from some, by violence and falsehood cutting off others: the temper of this people was toward killing, their designs laid for it, &c.
Stealing; injuring one another, either by taking away what was another’s, or detaining what should have been his, or giving less to another than was his due: every one inclined to frauds, many addicted to secret thefts, and some openly practicing it.
Committing adultery; which was a sin grown high among them, a sin directly against the truth and mercy which should have been among them. Under this, all degrees of adultery, unchaste thoughts, words, and gestures are included.
They break out; as waters that swell above all banks, or as unruly beasts that break over all hedges, so you, O Israelites, have broken down the hedge of the law, which expressly forbids what you daily practise.
Blood toucheth blood; slaughters are multiplied: by blood the Scripture understandeth slaughter, Gen_4:10, &c.; Psa_58:10. Possibly the wrong done by the adulterer was (as Ammon’s) revenged with the slaughter of the adulterer; or possibly it may refer to murders committed in the very court of the temple; so the blood of the murdered touched the blood of sacrifices. It is too particular to refer it to the blood of Zechariah slain between the porch and the altar, and which (some say) ran down to the altar and touched the blood of the sacrifice. Or what if this should refer to what will be ere long, when Jeroboam is dead, when Zachariah is murdered by Shallum, 2Ki_15:10; Menahem slew Shallum, 2Ki_15:14, and ripped up women with child in Tiphsah, 2Ki_15:16; when Pekah slew Pekahiah, and Hoshea slew him? These kings being thus slain, no doubt much blood was spilt; all which happened in less than forty years; for from Zechariah to Pekah’s usurpation are but fourteen years, from Pekah’s entrance on the throne to Hoshea’s conspiracy are twenty years.