"Indeed they don't know to do right," says Yahweh, "Who hoard plunder and loot in their palaces."
With violence and robbery - They could not understand what was right, while they habitually did what was wrong. They “stored up,” as they deemed, the gains and fruits; the robbery and injustice they saw not, because they turned away from seeing. But what is “stored” up, is not what wastes away, but what abides. Who doubts it? Then, what they treasured, were not the perishing things of earth, but, in truth, the sins themselves, as “a treasure of wrath against the Day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” Romans 2:5. Strange treasure, to be so diligently accumulated, guarded, multiplied! Yet it is, in fact, all which remains. “So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” Luke 12:21. He adds, as an aggravation, “in their palaces.” Deformed as in all oppression, yet to “oppress the poor, to increase his riches” Proverbs 22:16, has an unnatural hideousness of its own. What was wrung from the poor, laid up “in places!” Yet what else is it to cheapen luxuries at the cost of the wages of the poor?