(6) Changed my judgments into wickedness.--Better, hath wickedly resisted my judgments, the sense adopted by most modern expositors.

More than the nations.--Not, of course, absolutely, but in proportion to the knowledge and the privileges given them. It would be an exaggeration to say that the Israelites were actually more evil in their life than the surrounding heathen; for they were, no doubt, far better. Even of those cities which our Lord, at a later day, so strongly upbraided, it would be absurd to suppose that they equalled Sodom and Gomorrah in their iniquity. God's judgments are always relative and proportioned to the opportunities He has granted to men. The point is that the Israelites had resisted His judgments more than the heathen; they had sinned against greater light. The pronoun they in the last clause refers, of course, to the Israelites, not to the heathen.

Verse 6. - She hath changed, etc. To that calling Jerusalem had been unfaithful. Corruptio optimi pessima, and she had sunk to a lower level than the nations round about her. For changed my judgments into wickedness, read, with the Revised Version, hath rebelled against my judgments in doing wickedness. The pronoun refers, not to the nations, but to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and so in the next clause.

5:5-17 The sentence passed upon Jerusalem is very dreadful, the manner of expression makes it still more so. Who is able to stand in God's sight when he is angry? Those who live and die impenitent, will perish for ever unpitied; there is a day coming when the Lord will not spare. Let not persons or churches, who change the Lord's statutes, expect to escape the doom of Jerusalem. Let us endeavour to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. Sooner or later God's word will prove itself true.And she hath changed my judgments into wickedness more than the nations,.... So they changed their glory for that which did not profit; and the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man; and the truth of God into a lie, Jeremiah 2:11; or, "for wickedness" (q); for judgments and laws that were not good, and which to observe was wickedness. The word rendered "changed" signifies to "rebel against" or to "transgress": and the may be, she, that is, Jerusalem, has "rebelled" against my judgments, and "transgressed" (r) them in a wicked manner, even to a greater degree than the nations of the world. The Targum and Jarchi interpret it changed as we do:

and my statutes more than the countries that are round about her. "Judgments" and "statutes", are the same laws and ordinances of worship, being just and righteous, and firm and unalterable; unless it should rather be thought that "judgments" belong to the moral law, being given forth by the Lord as a judge, and founded upon judgment and righteousness; and "statutes" to the ceremonial law, being of positive institution and appointment, and to last so long as it was the pleasure of the lawgiver:

for they have refused my judgments and my statutes; they refused to comply with them, and to yield an obedience to them, and that with loathing, disdain, and contempt, as the word (s) signifies,

they have not walked in them; they did not make them the role of their walk and conversation; they showed no regard to them; they went out of the way of them, into crooked paths, with the workers of iniquity.

(q) "ut improbe ageret", Cocceius. (r) "transgressa est, vel rebellis fuit", Calvin; "refractaria (s) "Verbum" "significat spernere, reprobare, rejicere, idque ex contemptu et fastidio", Polanus.