forsaken father is, as it were, sadly brooding over his erring child's
sins, which are his father's sorrows and his own miseries. In verse 4
the black catalogue of the prodigal's doings begins on the surface with
what we call 'moral' delinquencies, and then digs deeper to disclose the
root of these in what we call 'religious' relations perverted. The two
are inseparably united, for no man who is wrong with God can be right
with duty or with men. Notice, too, how one word flashes into clearness
the sad truth of universal experience--that 'iniquity,' however it may
delude us into fancying that by it we throw off the burden of conscience
and duty, piles heavier weights on our backs. The doer of iniquity is
'laden with iniquity.' Notice, too, how the awful entail of evil from
parents to children is adduced--shall we say as aggravating, or as
lessening, the guilt of each generation? Isaiah's contemporaries are 'a
seed of evil-doers,' spring from such, and in their turn are 'children
that are corrupters.' The fatal bias becomes stronger as it passes down.
Heredity is a fact, whether you call it original sin or not.

But the bitter fountain of all evil lies in distorted relations to God.
'They have forsaken the Lord'; that is why they 'do corruptly.' They
have 'despised the Holy One of Israel'; that is why they are 'laden with
iniquity.' Alienated hearts separate from Him. To forsake Him is to
despise Him. To go from Him is to go 'away backward.' Whatever may have
been our inheritance of evil, we each go further from Him. And this
fatherly lament over Judah is indeed a wail over every child of man.
Does it not echo in the 'pearl of parables,' and may we not suppose that
it suggested that supreme revelation of man's misery and God's love?

After the indictment comes the sentence (vs. 5-8). Perhaps 'sentence' is
not altogether accurate, for these verses do not so much decree a future
as describe a present, and the deep tone of pitying wonder sounds