For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of [those] lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass.
Ver. 2. For they have taken of their daughters] Taken them for wives: which was flatly forbidden, Deuteronomy 7:3, and a reason given, Ezra 9:4, from the evil effect of such unblest marriages. This abuse Malachi complaineth of, Malachi 2:11; Malachi 2:13, whom some make to be the same man with Ezra.
For themselves, and for their sons] Whom they herein helped to a cold armful (as Lycephron calleth a bad wife, ψυχρον παραγκαλισμα), or rather to an unnatural heat, worse than that of a quartan ague, as said Simonides; as bad as that of an evil spirit, said another heathen.
So that the holy seed] i.e. The children of Israel, who were all federally holy at least, Deuteronomy 7:6, as are also all the children of Christian parents, 1 Corinthians 7:14 .
Hath been chief in this trespass] Which they think audaciously to bear out with their big looks, to obtrude and justify to the world this most malapert misdemeanour, because it is facinus maioris abollae, the fact of a great one (Juvenal).