Isaiah 1:5

Verse Isaiah 1:5. Why should ye be stricken any more - "On what part," c.?] The Vulgate renders על מה al meh, super quo, (see Job 38:6; 2 Chronicles 32:10,) upon what part. And so Abendana on Sal. ben Melech: "There are some who explain it thus: Upon what limb shall you be smitten, if you add defection? for already for your sins have you been smitten upon all of them; so that there is not to be found in you a whole limb on which you can be smitten." Which agrees with what follows: "From the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it:" and the sentiment and image is exactly the same with that of Ovid, Pont. ii. 7, 42: -

Vix habet in nobis jam nova plaga locum.

There is no place on you for a new stripe. Or that still more expressive line of Euripides; the great force and effect of which Longinus ascribes to its close and compressed structure, analogous to the sense which it expresses: -

́γεμω κακων δη· κ' ουκετ' εσθ' ὁπη τιθῃ.

I am full of miseries: there's no room for more.

Herc. Fur. 1245, Long. sec. 40.

"On what part will ye strike again? will ye add correction?" This is addressed to the instruments of God's vengeance; those that inflicted the punishment, who or whatsoever they were. Ad verbum certae personae intelligendae sunt, quibus ista actio quae per verbum exprimitur competit; "The words are addressed to the persons who were the agents employed in the work expressed by the original word," as Glassius says in a similar case, Phil. Sacr. i. 3, 22. See Isaiah 7:4.

As from ידע yada, דעה deah, knowledge; from יעץ yaats, עצה etsah, counsel; from ישן yeshan, שנה shenah, sleep, c. so from יסר yasar is regularly derived סרה sarah, correction.

Ver. Isaiah 1:5. The whole head is sick] The king and the priests are equally gone away from truth and righteousness. Or, The state is oppressed by its enemies, and the Church corrupted in its rulers and in its members.