They trample on the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, And deny justice to the oppressed; And a man and his father use the same maiden, to profane my holy name;
To profane My Holy Name - that is, as called upon them, as the people of God. God had said, “ye shall keep My commandments and do them (Leviticus 22:31-32; add Leviticus 20:3; Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 21:6). “I” am “the Lord, and ye shall not defile My Holy Name. For I will be sanctified among the children of Israel. I am the Lord who sanctifies you.” The sins of God’s people are a reproach upon Himself. They bring Him, so to say, in contact with sin. They defeat the object of His creation and revelation. He created man in His Image, to bear His likeness, to have one will with Himself. In effect, through sin, He has created rebels, deformed, unlike. So long as He bears with them, it seems as if He were indifferent to them. Those to whom He has not revealed Himself, must needs think that He takes no account of what He permits unnoticed. Israel, whom God had separated from the pagan, did, by “mingling with the pagan and learning their works” Psalms 106:35, all which in them lay, to “profane” His “Holy Name.” They acted as if they had no other purpose than to defile it (see the note at Hosea 8:4).