And if ye shall despise my statutes. — From passive indifference to the Divine statutes mentioned in the preceding verse, their falling away is sure to follow. Hence what was at first mere listlessness now develops itself into a contemptuous education of God’s ordinances.
Or if your soul abhor my judgments. — Better, and if your soul, &c, as the picture of their Apostasy goes on developing itself.
But that ye break my covenant. — Better, that ye break, &c, without the “but,” which is not in the original, and obscures the sense of the passage, since it is the fact of their abhorrence of God’s law which breaks the Divine covenant with them. (See Genesis 17:14.) The sense is more correctly given by rendering this clause “Thus breaking my covenant,” or “Thereby breaking my covenant.”