Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and issue oppressive decrees,
1. Woe to them that decree. He now attacks the people more closely, as he did in the first and second chapters, to make them feel that they are justly afflicted; for men never acknowledge that they are justly punished till they have been manifestly convicted and constrained.
Whether they were the princes and judges of Israel of Judah, or both, that the prophet denounced this woe against, is not certain: if those of Israel, these verses are to be joined with the close of the foregoing chapter, which is probable enough, because the burden of that prophecy (for all this his anger is not turned away) is repeated here (Isa 10:4); if...
Commenting on Isaiah 10:1-4
Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees,.... Or, "O ye that decree", &c. being a sign of the vocative case, and an interjection of calling, as Aben Ezra observes; though the Targum and other versions understand it of a threatening denounced; and is to be understood as lying against lawgivers and judges, political rulers and governors of the people, that made unrighteous laws; laws which...