Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
Your words have been stout against Me - , probably "oppressive to Me," as it is said, the famine was strong upon the land. And ye have said, "What have we spoken among ourselves against Thee?" Again, the entire unconsciousness of self-ignorance and self-conceit! They had criticized God, and knew it not. "Before, he had said Malachi 2:17. ' Ye have wearied the Lord with your words, and ye said, Wherein have we wearied Him? When ye said, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord' " etc.
Now he repeats this more fully. For the people who returned from Babylon seemed to have a knowledge of God, and to observe the law, and to understand their sin, and to offer sacrifices for sin; to pay tithes, to observe the sabbath, and the rest, commanded in the law of God, and seeing all the nations around them abounding in all things, and that they themselves were in penury, hunger and misery, was scandalized and said, ' What does it benefit me, that I worship the One True God, abominate idols, and, pricked with the consciousness of sin, walk mournfully before God?' A topic, which is pursued more largely in Ps. 73." Only the Psalmist relates his temptations to God, and God' s deliverance of him from them; these adopted them and spake them against God. They claim, for their partial and meagre service, to have fulfilled God' s law, taking to themselves God' s words of Abraham, "he kept My charge" .
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