Nay, my sons; for [it is] no good report that I hear: ye make the LORD'S people to transgress.
Ver. 24. Nay, my sons.] Too mild all along. He should have said as Isaiah 57:3,4, "Draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore," &c., ye degenerate brood and sons of Belial, and not of Eli; ye brats of fathomless perdition, &c.
For it is no good report that I hear.] He should have said, It is stark stinking naught that I hear, and woe is me that I yet live to hear it; it had been better that I had died long since, or that you had been buried alive, than thus to live and stink above ground. But he saith only, "I hear ill of you by all the people": as if he went only upon hearsay; and were put on by the people thus to check them.
Ye make the Lord's people to transgress.] Or, To cry out: to transgress, even to a cry, by their abhorring the sacrifices, - see 1 Samuel 2:17 - which they did, but ought not to have done, - for the evil lives of those profligate priests.