In one of His most intense exchanges with His enemies, Jesus says that they “do the deeds of your father” in seeking to kill Jesus. He means that the devil is their father (John 8:39, 44). They protest that they are children of Abraham and sons of God (vv. 39, 41). “We are not born of fornication,” they insist (v. 41).
Jesus here reapplies the condemnation of Isaiah against the people of Judah: Jews who pride themselves on being children of faithful Abraham and Sarah instead have a different parentage. They are the product of a union of an adulterer with a prostitute (Isaiah 57:3).
The whore is presumably Judah herself, or Jerusalem, considered as a mother of her offspring (cf. Isaiah 1:21). But who is the adulterer who is Judah’s father? He is unspecified, but the following verses describe Judah’s attachment to idols (vv. 5-8). When mother Zion uncovers herself and spreads her legs to idols (v. 8), the product is mockers, children of rebellion, a seed of deceit (v. 4).
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