You have plowed wickedness. You have reaped iniquity. You have eaten the fruit of lies, For you trusted in your way, in the multitude of your mighty men.
Now follows the other verse, which, as I have said, completes the passage, Ye have ploughed ungodliness, iniquity have ye reaped: ye have eaten the fruit of falsehood The Prophet shows that the people had in vain been daily admonished, and so kindly and sweetly allured by the Lord; for they had not only slighted wholesome warnings, but had, in their perverse wickedness, abandoned themselves to a contrary course: ye have ploughed, he says, impiety; God has exhorted you to sow righteousness, — what have ye sown? Impiety; and then ye have reaped iniquity. Some think that the punishments which the people had to bear are pointed out here; as though the Prophet had said, “God has returned to you such a produce as was suitable to your sowing; ye are therefore satiated with falsehood — that is, with your own false confidence.” But he seems rather to pursue the same strain of thought, and to say, that they had ploughed impiety — that is, that they had been from the beginning ungodly; and then, that they had reaped iniquity — that is, that they had continued their wickedness to the very harvest, and laid up their fruit as it were in a storehouse, that they might satiate themselves with treachery. The Prophet, I think, speaks in this sense; but let there be a free choice. I only show what seems to me most suitable. 