Psalms 69:27

Add iniquity to their iniquity Or, give or permit, as תנה, tenah, may be properly rendered. The old version expresses the psalmist's meaning accurately, Let, or permit, them to fall from one wickedness to another. It is not unusual with God, as a punishment of some great sin or sins, though not to infuse into men any evil, yet, by withdrawing his grace, and leaving them to themselves, to suffer them to commit more sins, and to be so far from being reformed, as daily to grow worse and worse, and at last to become quite obdurate and irreclaimable. The words, however, may be rendered, Add punishment to their punishment, (for the word עון is often put for the punishment of iniquity.) Send one judgment upon them after another, without ceasing. And let them not come into thy righteousness Into that way of obedience which thou requirest, and which thou wilt accept, the obedience of faith in the Messiah and his gospel, producing love, and universal holiness and righteousness; or, to thy mercy, thy pardoning mercy, as the original word frequently signifies, so as to be made partakers of it. Let them not obtain an interest in the everlasting righteousness which the Messiah shall bring into the world, Daniel 9:24; the righteousness of God by faith, revealed in the gospel, and witnessed by the law and the prophets, Philippians 3:9; Romans 1:17; and Romans 3:9, &c., according to which God justifies the ungodly, and accepts them as righteous in his sight. For this was the righteousness which the Jews rejected, Romans 10:3, according to this prediction. Thus, as the first branch of this verse foretels their being guilty of many sins, and adding iniquity to iniquity, so this predicts their rejection of, and therefore their exclusion from, an interest in the only remedy, the remission of sins through faith in the Mediator, and the holiness and happiness consequent thereon.