Isaiah 57:3

But draw near hither,.... The death of the righteous, and their happiness after it, being observed: the wicked, who thought themselves safe from danger, and the happier that they were rid of the

But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore. But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress.

Draw near hither, to God’ s tribunal, to answer for yourselves, and to hear what I have to say against you, and to receive your sentence. Sons of the sorceress; not by propagation, but by imitation; such being frequently called a man or woman’ s sons that learn their art, and follow their example: you sorcerers, either properly or metaphorically so called; for the Jews were guilty of it both ways. The seed of the adulterer and the whore; not the genuine children of Abraham, as you pretend and boast, but begotten in fornication upon a common whore; which is not to be understood properly, but figuratively, because their dispositions and carriages were far more suitable to a bastardly brood than to Abraham’ s seed.

Isaiah 57:3 But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore.Ver. 3. But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress.] Here "Esaias is very bold," as the apostle saith of him in another case, and maketh it appear that he was none of those dumb dogs he had rated at in the former chapter. The Jews gloried much in their pedigree and descent from Abraham, and that they were "born of the free woman." He telleth them flat and plain that they were witches’ children, whores’ sons, a bastardly brood, as our Saviour afterwards called them, a race of rebels, a seed of serpents, shamefully degenerate from their praiseworthy progenitors. γενεαμοιχαλις.

(3) Ye sons of the sorceress.—The words may be purely figurative, as meaning those who practise sorcery, but it is also possible that they may have reference to the female soothsayers, such as are described in Ezekiel 13:17-23. The adulterer.—Here again the epithet may have had both a figurative and a literal application. (Comp. Matthew 12:39; Matthew 16:4; James 4:4.)

3–13. Invective against an idolatrous party.—With regard to the reference of this obscure and difficult passage the following points have to be noticed: (1) The scenery of Isa 57:5-6 is unmistakeably Palestinian (wadis, clefts of the rock, terebinths). (2) Several of the rites specified bear the complexion of Canaanitish heathenism, and could not have been performed in Babylonia. (3) The opening words (“But ye”) seem to imply that the people addressed are distinct from those whose leaders are denounced in Isaiah 56:10-12. (4) Those spoken of are animated by contempt and hatred of the cause and people of Jehovah (Isaiah 57:4), while at the same time they advance pretensions to “righteousness” or correctness of religious standing (Isaiah 57:12). (5) They have persisted in their abominations down to the time of the prophecy (Isaiah 57:10-13). On the supposition that the prophecy was written after the return from Babylon, there is much plausibility in the view that the party here addressed is the Samaritan community. This theory is at all events simpler than that advocated by the majority of critics, who have felt the force of the objections against exilic authorship, and have accordingly supposed that the passage (or its original) was written at some time previous to the Captivity and borrowed by the great prophet of the Exile as a warning against idolatrous tendencies which still manifested themselves in Babylon. (See further Introduction, pp. lvii, lix). The connexion between this section and the preceding would be explained by the fact that the Jewish aristocracy cultivated friendly relations with the Samaritans; there was a serious danger that the struggling Jewish community should by these alliances be dragged down to the level of their semi-pagan neighbours.

But draw near hither - That is, come near to hear the solemn sentence which God pronounces in regard to your character and doom.

3, 4. Draw near… ye sons of the sorceress — The Hebrew here is very emphatic: You, you.