But ye [are] they that forsake the LORD, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for that troop, and that furnish the drink offering unto that number.
Ver. 11. But ye are they that forsake the Lord.] Or, As for you, that have forsaken the Lord to observe lying vanities, and so are miserable by your own election, Joh 12:8 you shall be yet more miserable at the great day of judgment especially, of which some take this following part of the chapter to be meant and intended. Then these improbi et reprobi shall be sure to smoke for it; then they shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked; yea, the judge himself shall show them a manifest difference. Isa 65:13-16
That forget my holy mountain,] i.e., My temple and pure worship, which ye slight and neglect, q.d., There is no new wine in your cluster, but rather gall and deadly poison; therefore it shall be otherwise with you.
That prepare a table for that troop.] As the Israelites feasted before the Lord; Deu 16:14-15 so in an apish imitation did the heathens before their idols; Jdg 9:27 Eze 18:6-7 1Co 8:10 and of them these superstitious Jews had learned to do the like, in the days of Ahaz and Manasseh, who degenerated into his grandfather Ahaz, as if there had been no intervention of a Hezekiah.
For that troop.] So the prophet speaketh, as pointing to their idols, whereof they had great store. Gad (here used) and Menni (rendered number here likewise), some interpret fortune and fate; others, Jupiter and Mercury. The Septuagint, for "to that number," hath "to the devil." Oecolampadius thinks the prophet alludeth to the Pythagorean numbers, and especially to the number of four (τετρακτος), which they superstitiously observed. Others say, the Jews symbolised with the heathens in drinking to their idols by number. To such an idol they would drink so many cups, and that was called a drink offering to that number. Hence Antiphanes in Athenaeus a saith,
“ Adusque tria pocula venerandos esse deos. ”
a Lib. x.