“Behold,” I give unto “this people” causes of stumbling,
And they shall stumble against them:
Fathers and sons together,
“The neighbor and his friend shall perish.”
This is the natural consequence of their conduct. Their service of Yahweh was a systematic hypocrisy: how then could they walk uprightly with their fellow-men? When God lays stumblingblocks in men’s way, it is by the general action of His moral law James 1:13-14, by which willful sin in one point reacts upon the whole moral nature James 2:10.