Matthew Poole and continuators on Isaiah 59:3

3 For your hands are defiled with blood , and your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies , your tongue hath uttered perverseness .

Here the Prophet comes from a more general, to a more particular charge against them; by blood we are to understand either murders, and bloodshed, properly so called, or ways of injustice, extortion, oppression, and cruelties, whereby men are deprived of a livelyhood; hence hating our Brother, is called murder, 1 Iohn 3. 15. and the inhabitants of Ierusalem called murderers, see how the Prophet phraseth their oppression, Mic. 3. 1, 2, 3.

This is not added to protract the discourse, but to aggravate their sin. q. d. Not only your hands, but your fingers, you are not free from the least part of injustice.

Not only properly so called, but perjuries, and wronging your Neighbours by slanders, and false accusations, wherein he shews they did not only offer violence by the hand, but they had ways of circumventing with their lips.

The verb doth properly signifie to muse, or meditate; then the meaning is, that what they mutter, or utter with the tongue, they do it out of premeditated malice from a perverse spirit; you may have a larger comment upon this▪ Ier. 9. 3, 4, 5, 6.

Perverse words are such as are contrary to Gods Word, and it is put here in the abstract, to intimate that their words were every way contrary to Gods Will.

Marginal references: Cha. 1. 15.