Add iniquity to their iniquity
Let them alone in sin; suffer them to go on in it; lay no restraints upon them; put no stop in providence in their way; let them proceed from one evil to another, till they fall into ruin: to their natural and acquired hardness of heart, give them up to a judicial hardness; that they may do things that are not convenient, and be damned. Suffer them not to stop at the crucifixion of the Messiah; let them go on to persecute his apostles and followers; to show the utmost spite and malice against the Christian religion; to embrace false Christs, and blaspheme the true one; to believe the greatest lies and absurdities, and commit the foulest of actions; as seditions, rapines, murders as they did while Jerusalem was besieged; that they may fill up the measure of their sins, and wrath may come upon them to the uttermost, ( 1 Thessalonians 2:15 1 Thessalonians 2:16 ) . The word (Nwe) , rendered "iniquity", sometimes signifies "punishment", as in ( Genesis 4:13 ) ; and, according to this sense of it, the words may be differently rendered, and admit a different meaning; either, "give punishment for their iniquity" F13; so Kimchi; that is, punish them according to their deserts, as their sins and iniquities require: or, "add punishment to their punishment" F14; to their present temporal punishment before imprecated, relating to their table mercies, their persons, and their habitations, add future and everlasting punishment; let them be punished with everlasting destruction, soul and body, in hell;
and let them not come into thy righteousness;
meaning, not his strict justice or righteous judgment; into that they would certainly come; nor was it the will of the Messiah they should escape it: but either the goodness, grace, and mercy of God, which is sometimes desired by righteousness, as in ( Psalms 31:1 ) ( 51:14 ) ; and the sense is, let them have no share in pardoning grace now, nor obtain mercy in the last day; but be condemned when they are judged, ( Psalms 109:7 ) . Or rather, the righteousness of Christ, which is called the righteousness of God, that is, the Father; because he approves and accepts of it, and imputes it to his people without works: and seeing the Jews sought for justification by their own works, and went about to establish their own righteousness, and submitted not to Christ's, but despised and rejected it; it was but just that they should be excluded from all benefit and advantage by it, as is here imprecated. The Targum is,
``and let them not be worthy to come into the congregation of shy righteous ones;''neither here, nor at the last judgment; see ( Psalms 1:5 ) .