Isaiah 28:10 - Exposition

For precept must be upon precept ; rather, for it is precept upon precept (Lowth, Cheyne). The whole teaching is nothing but an accumulation of precept upon precept, rule upon rule, one little injunction followed up by another, here a little, there a little. The objectors profess to find in the prophet's teaching nothing grand, nothing broad—no enunciation of great leading principles; but a perpetual drizzling rain of petty maxims and rules, vexatious, cramping, confining; especially unsuitable to men Who had had the training of priests and prophets, and could have appreciated a grand theory, or a new religious standpoint, but were simply revolted at a teaching which seemed to them narrow, childish, and wearisome. It has been said that in the language of this passage "we may hear the heavy babbling utterance of the drunken scoffers" (Delitzsch); but in this we have perhaps an over-refinement. Isaiah probably gives us, not what his adversaries said of him over their cups, but the best arguments which they could hit on in their sober hours to depreciate his doe-trine. The arguments must be allowed to be clever.