Chapter 2:17 is so directly connected with the third that it should have been made the first verse of it.
“Ye have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him?”
Insensibility to God’s love we have seen in chapter 1:2, and utter blindness regarding their shocking disregard of what was due to Him, in chapter 1:6-7, and again in chapter 2. A plain mark of moral distance from God is the state of self-satisfaction while going on in ways displeasing to Him, which is revealed here; how different altogether from the attitude and language of the publican in Luke 18:13: “And the publican standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a (properly the) sinner”!
What depth of moral darkness must have been theirs, who said, “Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delighteth in them.” Whence come such thoughts, so utterly false and wicked? O, is it not amazing that God in love seeks such wanderers from Himself? They said, “Where is the God of judgment?”, as much as to say, There is no day of reckoning; we can do as we please. This is the unspoken language of many a human heart in out day,