Isaiah 28:9,10 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

Whom shall he teach knowledge?— This period, though different in words, is the same in sense with that preceding. The meaning is, that the teachers, priests, and elders of the people, whose duty it was to maintain the purity and integrity of the public doctrine and counsels, had deviated so far from the path of right, that they were entirely ignorant with respect to the true doctrine of salvation, which was to be found in the ancient patriarchal and Mosaic system; they could neither perceive, digest, nor teach it: that the scholastic doctrine of that time here referred to was a doctrine accommodated to a puerile, childish understanding, as was that of the Pharisees; not masculine, solid, well-connected, such as ought to be the doctrine of true religion, which should satisfy a man of a strong and well-exercised mind; but that it consisted of precepts, commended indeed under the specious name of ancient traditions, but entirely independent, and by no means connected together. The reader will observe the italics in these verses, which should be omitted in the perusal, as they destroy the sense: the original of the last verse is remarkably strong and expressive, particularly of the trifling and false doctrine of the Pharisees. See Vitringa, and Origen against Ceisus, lib. 2: p. 60.

Isaiah 28:9-10

9 Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.

10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: