Therefore; for the following reasons. Or, but, as this particle is oft used. But why do I persuade the Israelites to receive the light of the gospel? my labour is in vain. I foresee they will refuse it; and God, for their many and great sins, will give them up to apostacy and infidelity. Thou hast forsaken; wilt certainly forsake and reject. The body of that nation. They be replenished from the east; their land is full of the impious, and superstitious, and idolatrous manners of the Eastern nations, the Syrians and Chaldeans. Are soothsayers: these undertook to discover secret things, and to foretell future contingent things, by the superstitious observation of the stars, or clouds, or birds, or other ways of divination, which God had severely forbidden. See Leviticus 19:26. Like the Philistines, who are infamous for those practices; of which see one instance 1 Samuel 6:2. They please themselves; they delight in their manners, and company, and conversation, making leagues, and friendships, and marriages with them. In the children of strangers; either,
1. In the children begotten by them upon strange women; or rather,
2. In strangers, as this phrase is used, Nehemiah 9:2 Isaiah 60:10, and elsewhere.