They have corrupted themselves, their spot [is] not [the spot] of his children: [they are] a perverse and crooked generation.
Ver. 5. Their spot is not the spot.] Saints also have their spots, but not ingrained; not leopards' spots, that are not in the skin only, but the flesh and bones, in the sinews, and the most inner parts, and so cannot be cured by any art, or washed away with any water. It is of incogitancy that the saints fall; put them in mind, and they mend all: it is of passion, and passions last not long. They are preoccupated, taken at unawares, &c. Gal 6:1 They have ever God for their chief end, and will not forego him upon any terms: only they err in the way, as thinking they may fulfil such a lust, and God keep too; but there is no way of wickedness found in them. Though shaken, yet they are rooted as trees, and though they wag up and down, yet they remove not, - as a ship at anchor. Sin stings the wicked, as the fiery serpents did the Israelites: the sins of the saints are but like the viper on Paul's hand, that hurt him not. Sin makes wicked men the object of God's hatred, the saints of his pity: as we hate poison in a toad, but we pity it in a man; in the one it is their nature, in the other their disease.
Perverse and crooked.] They wriggle and writhe after the manner of wrestlers, that wave up and down, and wind the other way: so the Hebrew word signifieth.