For Three Sins, and for Four

One nation after another is called to account. Damascus crushed Gilead; Gaza and Tyre sold their captives into slavery; Edom trampled his own brother; Ammon killed women who were with child; Moab dug up the bones of a dead king. Last of all come Judah and Israel themselves. They sold the poor for the price of a pair of sandals, their courts took bribes, and father and son went in to the same woman, defiling the temple.

The sins of the foreign nations did not escape judgment, even though they were not committed against Israel, for to trample a human being is in itself rebellion against the One who made that person. Yet Judah and Israel, who had watched those nations sin, went on to repeat the very same sins, though they were the people God had brought out of Egypt and given a temple. Their sin was committed where love had been given most richly, and so the rebuke was the heaviest of all.

Neither the temple nor a long history of being loved can cover sin. God judged the nations first and so gave his people time to repent, but Israel would not listen to the end, and judgment came upon them. The heart that counts itself less sinful than others shows that it has yet to learn what repentance is, and whoever stands in such pride must turn back now.