Woe to them! For they have wandered from me. Destruction to them! For they have trespassed against me. Though I would redeem them, Yet they have spoken lies against me.
They have spoken lies against Me - People “speak lies” against God, in their hearts, their words, their deeds; whenever they harbor thoughts, speak words, or act, so as to deny that God is what He is, or as to imply that He is not what He has declared Himself to be. Whoever seeks anything out of God or against His will; whoever seeks from man, or from idols, or from fortune, or from his own powers, what God alone bestows; whoever acts as if God was not a good God, ready to receive the penitent, or a just God who will avenge the holiness of His laws and “not clear the guilty,” does in fact, “speak lies against God.” People, day by day, “speak lies against God,” against His Wisdom, His providence, His justice, His Goodness, His Omniscience, when they are thinking of nothing less. Jeroboam spake lies against God, when he said, “these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt,” whereas God had so often enforced upon them Exodus 20:2; Leviticus 19:36; Leviticus 23:43; Numbers 15:41; Deuteronomy 5:6, Deuteronomy 5:15, “the Lord redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt (Deuteronomy 7:8; add. Deuteronomy 13:5; Deuteronomy 15:15; Deuteronomy 24:18); the Lord thy God brought thee out thence with a mighty hand and stretched out arm.”