Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity,
and sin with cart ropes;
Isaiah 5:18
II.....Who are eagerly set upon sin, and violent in their sinful
pursuits, who draw iniquity with cords of vanity, who take as
much pains to sin as the cattle do that draw a team.
III. WITH A CART-ROPE_ - "As a long cable" it of sin added to sin, and one sin drawing on another, till the whole
comes to an enormous length and magnitude; compared to the work of a
rope-maker still increasing and lengthening his rope, with the continued
addition of new materials.
By a long progression in iniquity,
and a continued accumulation of sin, men arrive at length to the highest
degree of wickedness; bidding open defiance to God, and scoffing at his
threatened judgments, as it is finely expressed in the next verse.
When the young man turns to paths of unchastity or of dishonesty, what
grief he makes for himself: what woe, what misery! His bodily disease,
his mental anguish we have no heart to describe. Ah! yes, The way of
transgressors is hard. Alas, poor slaves! They make a noise as they try to drown their
feelings; but as the crackling of thorns under a pot such is the mirth
of the wicked— hasty, noisy, momentary; gone, and nothing but ashes
left.
They are by long custom and confirmed habits so hardened in sin
that they cannot get clear of it. Those that sin through infirmity are drawn
away by sin; those that sin presumptuously draw iniquity to them, in spite of
the oppositions of Providence and the checks of conscience. Some by sin
understand the punishment of sin: they pull God's judgments upon their own
heads as it were, with cart-ropes."
Matthew Henry/Charles Spurgeon/Adam Clarke