Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
Ver. 16. Wash ye, make ye clean.] "Wash your hearts from wickedness, that ye may be saved"; Jer 4:14 "yea, cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double minded." Jam 4:8 But how is that done? "Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep," &c. Jam 4:9 Ye cannot wash your bloody hands in innocence; wash them therefore in tears, which are a second baptism of the soul where it is rinsed anew. And surely, as the sins of the old world, so of this little world, need a deluge. Set to work, therefore, and God will soon set in with you. Wash yourselves with the tears of true repentance, and God will wash you with the blood of his Son; only be sure to do your work thoroughly - wash hard, rub, rinse; we have inveterate stains, which will hardly be got out till the cloth be almost rubbed to pieces; and as an error in the first concoction is not mended in the second, nor of the second in the third, so if a man's humiliation hath not been sound, his reformation cannot be right. "Wash," therefore, and then
Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes.] Away with that abominable thing that is so grievous to all my five senses, yea, to my very soul, as is above said. Sin is in Scripture called pollution, leprosy, contagion, vomit of a dog, wallowing of a swine in the mire, &c., and must therefore be rid and removed out of the heart and life, or we cannot find favour.
Cease to do evil.] This is first to be done: depart from evil, and do good; break off your sins by repentance, and be abrupt in the work; sow not among the thorns, cast away all your transgressions, &c. The prophets, pressing moral duties in this sort, do it as explainers of the law: they did but unfold and draw out that arras which was folded together before.