I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing.
God had written for Israel the great things of His law and made them known for their welfare, yet they counted them as a strange, foreign, unfamiliar thing and disregarded them instead of receiving and following them. Its setting was the ten tribes in the time just before their captivity, even in some of the darkest hours when the forces of evil seemed about to gain the victory and God graciously revealed Himself and spread before them what was for their welfare as a nation. That rejection went with breach of the covenant and unfaithful conduct, forgetting the commandments and statutes and judgments they had promised to keep forever. Contempt for the law as a thing of naught opened the floodgates of iniquity upon Israel, producing a land with no truth nor mercy nor knowledge of God, marked by swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery until blood touched blood.
The verse also belongs to prophecies describing the world before the second coming, when widespread iniquity marks a world that transgresses God's law and breaks the everlasting covenant. God speaks the same word to every human being privileged with access to the Scriptures, providing the great truths of His law as food on which the mind and soul are built up and by which the life He imparts is sustained, leaving each person free to choose those provided topics to occupy thought and shape character. That rejection includes casting off God's Sabbath and fourth commandment and accepting and favoring a humanly established and enacted sabbath instead, exalting human laws above God's law.
When God's commandments are treated as strange, even highly exalted worship becomes sinful, while true and wholehearted obedience is acceptable to God. People can disregard God's revealed law even while claiming to know Him. Rejecting and disregarding God's law is a serious failure of His people, and the verse warns the church and its leaders not to repeat Israel's rejection of God's word.
God had written for Israel the great things of His law and made them known for their welfare, yet they counted them as a strange, foreign, unfamiliar thing and disregarded them instead of receiving and following them. Its setting was the ten tribes in the time just before their captivity, even in some of the darkest hours when the forces of evil seemed about to gain the victory and God graciously revealed Himself and spread before them what was for their welfare as a nation. That rejection went with breach of the covenant and unfaithful conduct, forgetting the commandments and statutes and judgments they had promised to keep forever. Contempt for the law as a thing of naught opened the floodgates of iniquity upon Israel, producing a land with no truth nor mercy nor knowledge of God, marked by swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery until blood touched blood.
The verse also belongs to prophecies describing the world before the second coming, when widespread iniquity marks a world that transgresses God's law and breaks the everlasting covenant. God speaks the same word to every human being privileged with access to the Scriptures, providing the great truths of His law as food on which the mind and soul are built up and by which the life He imparts is sustained, leaving each person free to choose those provided topics to occupy thought and shape character. That rejection includes casting off God's Sabbath and fourth commandment and accepting and favoring a humanly established and enacted sabbath instead, exalting human laws above God's law.
When God's commandments are treated as strange, even highly exalted worship becomes sinful, while true and wholehearted obedience is acceptable to God. People can disregard God's revealed law even while claiming to know Him. Rejecting and disregarding God's law is a serious failure of His people, and the verse warns the church and its leaders not to repeat Israel's rejection of God's word.