For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate [from their right].
Ver. 12. For I know your manifold transgressions, and your mighty sins] I know them, and can easily set them in an order before your eyes, Psalms 50:21, bring them out (as they did the vessels of the sanctuary) by number and by weight, Ezra 8:34 : make you answer for all with flames about your ears, lay open your many transgressions, and mighty sins, fortia peccata. The Hebrew hath it, your bony, or big boned sins; huge, heinous, and monstrous, capable of all manner of aggravations. All these I know, saith God, they are all in print in heaven, and I will one day read them aloud in the ears of all the world. Fac ergo confitendo propitium, quem tacendo non facis nescium, saith Austin. Make, therefore, God thy friend, by confessing thy sins to him, which thou canst not by any means conceal from him.
They afflict the just] They pinch and distress him by their oppressions, which are often here laid in their dish, as an abomination to the Lord; for he is merciful, see Amos 2:6 .
They take a bribe] A ransom to blind their eyes (Copher), as 1 Samuel 12:3, or a pacification of their pretended displeasure against heinous crimes brought before them. Olim didiei quid sint munera, said a worthy man: Once I have learned long since, how dangerous a thing it is for men in place to meddle with gifts. A public person, as he should have nothing to lose, so nothing to get; he should be above all price or sale.
They turn aside the poor in the gate] That is, in the place of judicature. This makes many that go to law, to be at length of Themistocles' mind; who professed that if two ways were shown him, one to hell, and the other to the bar, he would choose that which went to hell, and forsake the other. Another said, that he wondered much at two sorts of men; viz. those that go to sea, and those that go to law: not so much that they did so at first, but that, after trial, they would ever go a second time.