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.
But what he afterwards subjoins, נירו ניר, niru nir, plough the ploughing, is not, I confess, in its proper place; but there is in this nothing inconsistent: for after having exhorted them to plough, he now adds, that they were like uncultivated and desert fields, so that it was not right to sow the seed until they had been prepared. The Prophet then ought, according to the order of nature, to have begun with ploughing; but he simply said what he wished to convey, that the Israelites received not the fruit they desired, because they had only sown unrighteousness. If they now wished to be dealt with more kindly, he shows the remedy, which is to sow righteousness. If it was so, that they were already filled with wickedness, he shows that they were like a field overgrown with briers and thorns. When therefore a field has long remained uncultivated, thorns and thistles and other noxious herbs grow there, and a double ploughing will be necessary, and this double labour is called Novation; (71) and Jeremiah speaks of the same thing, when he shows that the people had grown hardened in their wickedness, and that they could not bear any fruit until the thorns were torn up by the roots, and until they had been well cleansed from the vices in which they had become fixed; and hence he says, — 