9. For this is a rebellious people. The word for or because points to the explanation of what has been already said; for the Prophet explains what the Lord intends to declare to posterity, namely, that the perverseness of this nation is desperate, because they cannot submit to be restrained by any doctrine. That the honorable appellation of the “people” wounded to the quick the hearts both of the ordinary ranks and of the nobles, may be inferred from their loud vaunting; for they boasted that they were the holy and elect seed of Abraham; as if God’s adoption had been a veil to cover the grossest crimes. But God commands that their crimes shall nevertheless be brought to light and openly proclaimed.
Who refuse to hear the law of Jehovah. By accusing them of this, he points out the source of all evils, namely, contempt of the word, which discovers their wickedness and their contempt of God himself; for it is idle to pretend that they worship God, when they are disobedient to his word. Isaiah likewise aggravates their guilt, by saying that they reject the remedy which doctrine offers for curing their diseases. On this account he calls them not only “rebellious,” and untameable or abandoned, but liars or treacherous persons; for they who refuse to obey the word of God, openly revolt from him, as if they could not endure his authority; and at the same time, they shew that they are given up to vanity and the delusions of Satan, so that they take no pleasure in sincerity.