Isaiah 57:3,4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

But draw near hither, &c. “The prophet proceeds to exhibit the church, totally corrupt as it was, the good men being extinct or dispersed; so that they who remained of the pure seed of the church lay hid in solitary places, while the body of the church appeared like a dead carcass; not the true, but the idolatrous church.” Thus Vitringa, who understands this paragraph as describing the state of the church in the dark ages of popery. It seems, however, by many of the expressions which the prophet uses, that he is rather giving a description of the corrupt state of the Jewish Church, before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. Draw near hither To God's tribunal, to receive your sentence; ye sons of the sorceress Not by propagation, but by imitation, those being frequently called men's sons that follow their example: the seed of the adulterer, &c. Not the genuine children of Abraham, as you pretend and boast yourselves to be; your dispositions being far more suitable to a spurious brood than to Abraham's seed. Against whom do you sport yourselves? Consider who it is that you mock and scoff at when you deride God's prophets, (see Isaiah 28:14; Isaiah 28:22,) and know that it is not so much men that you insult, as God, whose cause they plead, and in whose name they speak. Are ye not a seed of falsehood A generation of liars, whose practices contradict your professions, who deal deceitfully both with God and man?