Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
what profit . . . that we . . . kept, etc.--(See on Malachi 2:17). They here resume the same murmur against God. Job 21:14-15; Job 22:17 describe a further stage of the same skeptical spirit, when the skeptic has actually ceased to keep God's service. Psalms 73:1-14 describes the temptation to a like feeling in the saint when seeing the really godly suffer and the ungodly prosper in worldly goods now. The Jews here mistake utterly the nature of God's service, converting it into a mercenary bargain; they attended to outward observances, not from love to God, but in the hope of being well paid for in outward prosperity; when this was withheld, they charged God with being unjust, forgetting alike that God requires very different motives from theirs to accompany outward observances, and that God rewards even the true worshipper not so much in this life, as in the life to come.
his ordinance--literally, what He requires to be kept, "His observances."
walked mournfully--in mournful garb, sackcloth and ashes, the emblems of penitence; they forget Isaiah 58:3-8, where God, by showing what is true fasting, similarly rebukes those who then also said, Wherefore have we fasted and Thou seest not? etc. They mistook the outward show for real humiliation.
He notices the complaint of the Jews that it is of no profit to serve Jehovah, for that the ungodly proud are happy; and declares He will soon bring the day when it shall be known that He puts an everlasting distinction between the godly and the ungodly.
words . . . stout--Hebrew, "hard"; so "the hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him" (Judges 1:15) [HENDERSON].
have we spoken--The Hebrew expresses at once their assiduity and habit of speaking against God [VATABLUS]. The niphal form of the verb implies that these things were said, not directly to God, but of God, to one another (Ezekiel 33:20) [MOORE].
Other commentary entries containing this verse:
Job 1:11
Job 21:15
Job 34:8
Isaiah 58:3
Jude 1:15
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