The text is not denunciation, but tender, though indignant, pleading,
in hope of winning back the wanderers. The prophet has just been
pointing to the sorrowful results which necessarily follow on the
nation's apostasy, and tells Israel that its own wickedness shall
correct it, and then, in the text, he beseeches them not to be blind to
the meaning of their miseries, but to let these teach them how sinful
and how sorrowful their apostasy is. Men's sorrows are a mystery, but
that sinners should not have sorrows were a sadder mystery still. And
God pleads with us all not to lose the good of our experiences of the
bitterness of sin by our levity or our blindness to their meaning. By
His providences, by His Spirit working on us, by the plain teachings
and loving pleadings of His word, He is ever striving to open our eyes
that we may see Good and Evil, and recognise that all Good is bound up
for us with cleaving to God, and all Evil with departing from Him. When
we turn our backs on Him we are full front with the deformed figure of
Evil; when we turn away from it, we are face to face with Him, and in
Him, with all Good.