Isaiah 10

10:1-4 These verses are to be joined with the foregoing chapter. Woe to the superior powers that devise and decree unrighteous decrees! And woe to the inferior officers that draw them up, and enter them on record! But what will sinners do? Whither will they flee?

"\nWoe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees,.... Or, "O ye that decree", c. \u05d4\u05d5\u05d9 being a sign of the vocative case, and an interjection of calling, as Aben Ezra observes though the Targum and other versions understand it of a threatening denounced; and is to be understood as lying against lawgivers and judges, political rulers and governors of the people, that made unrighteous laws; laws which were not agreeable to the law of God, nor right reason; and were injurious to the persons and properties of men; and which were calculated for the oppression of good men, especially the poor, and for the protection of wicked men, who made no conscience of spoiling them:\n\nand that write grievousness [which] they have prescribed; laws grievous and intolerable being made by them, they wrote them, or ordered them to be written, to be engrossed and promulgated, published them, and obliged the people to be subject to them. This some understand of the scribes of judges, who sat in court, and wrote out the decrees and sentences made by them; but it rather intends the same persons as before; and not ecclesiastical but political governors are meant, and such as lived before the Babylonish captivity; or otherwise the whole is applicable to the Scribes and Pharisees, to the Misnic doctors, the authors of the oral law, the fathers of tradition, whose decisions and decrees were unrighteous and injurious, and contrary to the commands of God; heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and very oppressive of the poor, the fatherless, and the widow; for which they are reproved by Christ, Mt 15:3 Jarchi says it is an Arabic {g} word, which signifies scribes.\n\n{g} So and Scriba, Golius, col. 1999; so the word is used in the Chaldee and Syriac languages. See Castel. col. 1828, 1829.\n\n\n\n "

CHAPTER 10Isa 10:1-4. Fourth strophe.1. them that decree—namely, unrighteous judges.write grievousness, &c.—not the scribes, but the magistrates who caused unjust decisions (literally, "injustice" or "grievousness") to be recorded by them (Isa 65:6) [Maurer], (Isa 1:10, 23).

"\nTo turn aside the needy from judgment,.... Such laws being made as discouraged them from any application for justice; and, when they did, were harassed with such long, vexatious, and expensive suits, as obliged them to desist, and the cause being generally given against them, and for the rich:\n\nand to take away the right from the poor of my people; for not to do justice to the poor is the same as to rob and plunder them, and take away by force what of right belongs to them; wherefore it follows:\n\nthat widows may be their prey, and [that] they may rob the fatherless; who have none to protect and defend them, and whose protectors judges ought to be, in imitation of God, whom civil magistrates represent, who is the Judge of the widows and the fatherless; and therefore this is observed as an aggravation of their sin, which was very great indeed: it is very wicked in a judge to pervert the judgment of the poor and needy, the widow and the fatherless, contrary to laws that are made by God and men; but to make and prescribe wicked and unrighteous laws, that wickedness may be framed, and mischief committed by a law, that the poor and the needy, the widows and fatherless, may be injured under colour and pretence of law and justice, is the height of injustice. See Ps 94:20.\n\n\n "

"\nAnd what will ye do in the day of visitation,.... Not in a way of grace and mercy, but of wrath and anger, as the following clause explains it, when God should come and punish them for their sins; and so the Targum,\n\n"what will ye do in the day that your sins shall be visited upon you?''\n\nit designs the Babylonish captivity, as the next words show; the same phrase is used of the destruction of the Jews by the Romans,\n Lu 19:44:\n\nand in the desolation [which] shall come from far? from Assyria, which was distant from the land of Judea: the word {h} for "desolation" signifies a storm, tumult, noise, and confusion; referring to what would be made by the Assyrian army, when it came upon them:\n\nto whom will ye flee for help? Rezin king of Syria, their confederate, being destroyed; and Syria, with whom they were in alliance, now become their enemy, see Isa 9:11:\n\nand where will ye leave your glory? either their high titles, and ensigns of honour, as princes, judges, and civil magistrates, which they should be stripped of; or rather their mammon, as Aben Ezra interprets it, their unrighteous mammon, which they got by perverting the judgment of the poor and needy, the widow and the fatherless, of which they gloried; and which now would be taken away from them, when they should go into captivity.\n\n{h} \u05dc\u05e9\u05d5\u05d0\u05d4 "sub procella, quae a longinquo veniet", Cocceius; so the Targum renders it, "in tumult of tribulation".\n\n\n "

"\nWithout me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain,....