Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Isaiah 65:5 - 65:5
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Though they were so exceedingly guilty, yet they pretended to a singular sanctity, so as they would not suffer others to come near or touch them. The Samaritans are usually charged with this uncharitableness, and the use of this form of words; but as some do more excuse the Samaritans than the other Jews as to this rigour, so it may be questioned whether they were not at this time carried into captivity; and certain it is, that among the Jews there was such a generation from whom the Pharisees in our Saviour’s time were derived, and this was the reason of their not eating, except they washed, when they came from the market, Mar_7:4, lest peradventure they should there have touched some heathen, or some person who was legally unclean. Thus they esteemed themselves holier than others, though all their holiness lay in these rituals, and those too such as God never commanded. And indeed those who most exceed in such ritual holiness (lying merely in a separation from others, by the usage of some unwritten traditions) come most short in moral and true holiness; for of these God saith,
These are a smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burneth all the day; that is, a continual provocation to me; as smoke is an offence to our noses, Pro_10:26; which seemeth to be the sense rather than what some make, who make it a threatening of God’s wrath smoking against them, which is sufficiently expressed in the following verses.