14 I will not punish your daughters when they play the prostitute, nor your brides when they commit adultery; because the men consort with prostitutes, and they sacrifice with the shrine prostitutes; so the people without understanding will come to ruin.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
I will not punish your daughters - God threatens, as the severest woe, that He will not punish their sins with the correction of a Father in this present life, but will leave the sinners, unheeded, to follow all iniquity. It is the last punishment of persevering stoners, that God leaves them to prosper in their sins and in those things which help them to sin. Hence, we are taught to pray, "O Lord, correct me, but in judgment, not in Thine anger" Jeremiah 10:24. For since God chastiseth those whom He loveth, it follows, "if we be without chasetisement, whereof all are partakers, then are we bastards, and not sons" Hebrews 12:8. To be chastened severely for lesser sins, is a token of great love of God toward us; to sin on without punishment is a token of God's extremest displeasure, and a sign of reprobation. : "Great is the offence, if, when thou hast sinned, thou art undeserving of the wrath of God."
For themselves are separated with whores - God turns from them as unworthy to be spoken to anymore, and speaks of them, They "separate themselves," from whom? and with whom? They separate themselves "from" God, and with the degraded ones and "with" devils. Yet so do all those who choose willful sin.
And they sacrifice - (continually, as before) with (the) harlots The unhappy women here spoken of were such as were "consecrated" (as their name imports) to their vile gods and goddesses, and to prostitution. This dreadful consecration, yea desecration, whereby they were taught to seek honor in their disgrace, was spread in different forms over Phoenicia, Syria, Phrygia, Assyria, Babylonia. Ashtaroth, (the Greek Astarte) was its chief object. This horrible worship prevailed in Midian, when Israel was entering the promised land, and it suggested the devilish device of Balaam Numbers. 25; Numbers 31:8, Numbers 31:16 to entangle Israel in sin whereby they might forfeit the favor of God. The like is said to subsist to this day in pagan India. The sin was both the cause and effect of the superstition. Man's corrupt heart gave rise to the worship: and the worship in turn fostered the corruption. He first sanctioned the sin by aid of a degrading worship of nature, and then committed it under plea of that worship. He made his sin a law to him. Women, who never relapsed into the sin, sinned in obedience to the dreadful law . Blinded as they were, individual pagan had the excuse of their hereditary blindness; the Jews had imperfect grace. The sins of Christians are self sought, against light and grace.
Therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall - The word comprises both, "that doth not understand," and, "that will not understand." They might have understood, if they would. God had revealed Himself to them, and had given to them His law, and was still sending to them His prophets, so that they could not have known and understood God's will, had they willed. Ignorance, which we might avoid or cure, if we would, is itself a sin. It cannot excuse sin. They shall, he says, fall, "or be cast headlong." Those who blind their eyes, so as not to see or understand God's will, bring themselves to sudden ruin, which hide from themselves, until they fall headlong in it.
I will not punish - Why should you be stricken any more; ye will revolt more and more. When God, in judgment, removes his judgments, the case of that people is desperate. While there is hope, there is correction.
Themselves are separated - There is a reference here to certain debaucheries which should not be described. The state of the people at this time must have been abominable beyond all precedent; animal, sensual, bestial, diabolical: women consecrating themselves to serve their idols by public prostitution; boys dismembered like the Galli or priests of Cybele, men and women acting unnaturally; and all conjoining to act diabolically.
I will not (q) punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people [that] doth not understand shall fall.
(q) I will not correct your shame to bring you to proper living, but will let you run headlong to your own damnation.
I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredoms, nor your spouses when they commit adultery,.... Either not punish them at all, so that they shall go on in sin, and to a greater degree, to the disgrace and reproach of their parents and husbands; or not as yet, or not so severely in them, because it was by their example they were led into it. Jarchi's note is very impertinent, that God threatens them with the disuse of the bitter waters of jealousy. The words are by some rendered interrogatively, "shall I not punish your daughters?" &c. (r); verily I will; and not them only, but their parents and husbands too, who deserve more severe corrections:
for themselves are separated with whores, and sacrifice with harlots; they separated themselves to Baalpeor, that shameful idol, Hosea 9:10, the Priapus of the Gentiles, in whose idolatrous worship many obscene rites were used; these men separated themselves from their wives, as well as from God and his worship, and from the company and conversation of men, and in private committed uncleanness with the women that attended, and with the female priests that officiated at the worship of idols; those "sanctified" ones, as the word may be rendered; and after that ate of things offered to idols with them. So the Targum,
"they associated themselves with whores, and ate and drank with harlots.''
Some versions understand the latter of catamites, or sodomitical persons, and of the wickedness practised by them in such places.
Therefore the people that doth not understand; the law, as the Targum; what is to be done, and what to be avoided; the difference between the true and false religion; have no knowledge of divine and spiritual things, at least are very wavering and unsettled in their minds about religion, having thought little, and know less, of the matter:
shall fall: into idolatry and adultery, led by such examples. So the Septuagint version, "is implicated with a whore"; or "embraces a whore", as the Syriac and Arabic versions; see Proverbs 7:22 or shall fall into calamities, ruin, and destruction; shall be dashed, as the Targum; so the Arabic interpreter of Mark 9:26, uses the word: though Aben Ezra and Kimchi say, that in the Arabic language it signifies to be perplexed and disturbed, so as not to know what to do (s). The first sense seems to be best, of being scandalized, offended, and stumbling and falling into sin; and which Abarbinel suggests, and it agrees with what follows concerning Judah.
(r) So Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Schmidt. (s) Vid. R. Song. Urbin, Ohel Moed, fol. 43. 2.
I will not punish . . . daughters--I will visit with the heaviest punishments "not" the unchaste "daughters and spouses," but the fathers and husbands; for it is these who "themselves" have set the bad example, so that as compared with the punishment of the latter, that of the former shall seem as nothing [MUNSTER].
separated with whores--withdrawn from the assembly of worshippers to some receptacle of impurity for carnal connection with whores.
sacrifice with harlots--They commit lewdness with women who devote their persons to be violated in honor of Astarte. (So the Hebrew for "harlots" means, as distinguished from "whores"). Compare Numbers 25:1-3; and the prohibition, Deuteronomy 23:18.
not understand-- (Isaiah 44:18; Isaiah 45:20).
shall fall--shall be cast down.
"I will not visit it upon your daughters that they commit whoredom, nor upon your daughters-in-law that they commit adultery; for they themselves go aside with harlots, and with holy maidens do they sacrifice: and the nation that does not see is ruined." God would not punish the daughters and daughters-in-law for their whoredom, because the elder ones did still worse. "So great was the number of fornications, that all punishment ceased, in despair of any amendment" (Jerome). With כּי הם God turns away from the reckless nation, as unworthy of being further addressed or exhorted, in righteous indignation at such presumptuous sinning, and proceed to speak about it in the third person: for "they (the fathers and husbands, not 'the priest,' as Simson supposes, since there is no allusion to them here) go," etc. פּרד, piel in an intransitive sense, to separate one's self, to go aside for the purpose of being alone with the harlots. Sacrificing with the qedēshōth, i.e., with prostitutes, or Hetairai (see at Genesis 38:14), may have taken its rise in the prevailing custom, viz., that fathers of families came with their wives to offer yearly sacrifices, and the wives shared in the sacrificial meals (1-Samuel 1:3.). Coming to the altar with Hetairai instead of their own wives, was the climax of shameless licentiousness. A nation that had sunk so low and had lost all perception must perish. לבט = Arab. lbṭ: to throw to the earth; or in the niphal, to cast headlong into destruction (Proverbs 10:8, Proverbs 10:10).
Nor your spouses - I will give them up to their own hearts. For themselves - The husband and fathers are examples to their wives and daughters. Therefore the people - The sottish ignorant people, that know not God. Shall fall - Be utterly ruined.
*More commentary available at chapter level.