I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall.
I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom - I will visit with the heaviest punishments, "not" the unchaste "daughters and spouses," but the fathers and husbands.
For themselves are separated with whores - for it is these who "themselves" have set the bad example, so that as compared with the punishment of the latter, that of the former shall seem as nothing (Munster).
Separated with whores - withdrawn from the assembly of worshippers to some receptacle of impurity, for carnal connection with whores.
And they sacrifice with harlots - Hebrew, 'with the harlots:' they commit lewdness with the women who devote their persons to be violated in honour of Astarte. So the Hebrew for "harlots" or consecrated prostitutes х haqªdeeshowt (H6948)] means, as distinguished from "whores" х zonowt (H2181)]. This horrid consecrated prostitution in honour of Ashtaroth or Astarte, or the generative powers of nature and the animal passion, existed in Phoenicia Syria Phrygia, Assyria, and Babylonia (Herodotus, 1: 199). It was the snare whereinto Israel fell with the Midianites, by Balaam's hellish counsel. It prevails in Hindu idol worship in the present day: women otherwise chaste submitted to it. Thereby man made his corruption to become a holy duty! Compare Numbers 25:1-3, where Israel's whoredom with the daughters of Moab is connected with his sacrificing and "joining himself unto Baal-peor;" and the prohibition, Deuteronomy 23:18, "Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for even both these are an abomination unto the Lord thy God."
Therefore the people that doth not understand - (Isaiah 44:18; Isaiah 45:20). They might have understood, if they would. Ignorance, therefore, is no excuse for the sin, but aggravates it, because when light shone around them they blinded their eyes, loving darkness rather than light. When men walk near a precipice blindfold they are sure to fall headlong.
Shall fall - shall be cast down headlong.