Verse 14. - The ancients... the princes. These were the chief oppressors. They delivered the judgments, and it was by them that justice was perverted. Jehovah therefore enters specially into judgment with them. For ye have eaten up; rather, So ye have eaten up. Jehovah is supposed to address the unjust judges. He reproaches them with having "eaten up," or rather "scorched up," his vineyard, i.e. Israel (comp. Isaiah 5:1-7), and taxes them with having still their ill-gotten gains in their houses. "So ye," he says, "have thus acted - ye whose duty it was to have acted so differently."

3:10-15 The rule was certain; however there might be national prosperity or trouble, it would be well with the righteous and ill with the wicked. Blessed be God, there is abundant encouragement to the righteous to trust in him, and for sinners to repent and return to him. It was time for the Lord to show his might. He will call men to a strict account for all the wealth and power intrusted to and abused by them. If it is sinful to disregard the necessities of the poor, how odious and wicked a part do they act, who bring men into poverty, and then oppress them!The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof,.... Both civil and ecclesiastical; the princes, chief priests, and elders of the people, who set themselves and took counsel together against the Lord and his Christ; would not suffer the people to be gathered to him; sought his life, and at last took it away.

For ye have eaten up the vineyard, or burnt it (p); the house of Israel, and of Judah compared to a vineyard, in a following chapter; and so the Targum,

"ye have oppressed my people;''

these are the husbandmen our Lord speaks of, that beat the servants that were sent for the fruits of the vineyard, and at last killed the heir, Matthew 21:34.

The spoil of the poor is in your houses; the Pharisees devoured widows' houses, and filled their own, with the spoil of them, Matthew 23:14.

(p) "succendistis", Vatablus, Montanus.