Isa 1:5-6 | JFB | STEP | 5. Why —rather, as Vulgate, "On what part." Image from a body covered all over with marks of blows ( ). There is no part in which you have not been smitten. head . . . sick, &c.—not referring, as it is commonly quoted, to their sins, but to the universality of their punishment. However, sin, the moral disease of the head or intellect, and the heart, is doubtless made its own punishment ( ). "Sick," literally, "is in a state of sickness" [GESENIUS ]; "has passed into sickness" [MAURER ].

Isaiah 1:5-6

5. Why—rather, as Vulgate, "On what part." Image from a body covered all over with marks of blows (Ps 38:3). There is no part in which you have not been smitten.

head . . . sick, &c.—not referring, as it is commonly quoted, to their sins, but to the universality of their punishment. However, sin, the moral disease of the head or intellect, and the heart, is doubtless made its own punishment (Pr 1:31; Jer 2:19; Ho 8:11). "Sick," literally, "is in a state of sickness" [GESENIUS]; "has passed into sickness" [MAURER].

6. From the lowest to the highest of the people; "the ancient and honorable, the head, the prophet that teacheth lies, the tail." See Isa 9:13-16. He first states their wretched condition, obvious to all (Isa 1:6-9); and then, not previously, their irreligious state, the cause of it.

wounds—judicially inflicted (Ho 5:13).

mollified with ointment—The art of medicine in the East consists chiefly in external applications (Lu 10:34; Jas 5:14).