And when you stretch forth your hands, I will turn away my eyes from you: and when you multiply prayer, I will not hear: for your hands are full of blood.

“Let those who do nothing right in life and think they are justified by the length of their prayer listen to these words. For the words of the prayer are not useful by themselves but only when they are offered up with earnest intent. Now the Pharisee also seemed to multiply his supplication. But what does the Scripture say? "The Pharisee stood and prayed thus to himself," not to God, for he turned back toward himself, since at all events he was in the sin of arrogance.”

“One asks, "What if I have been overcome?" Then cleanse yourself. "How, in what manner?" Weep, groan, give alms, apologize to the one who is offended, reconcile him to yourself in so doing, wash clean your tongue so that you will not offend God more grievously. If someone were to fill his or her hands with dung and embrace your feet asking something of you, you would push that person away with your foot rather than listen. Then why do you draw near to God in such a manner, because in reality the tongue is the hand of the one who prays, and by it we embrace the legs of God.”

“O foolish and wretched person, what are you doing? Why do you burden yourself with the weight of greater sins? Why do you inflict injury on God in addition to your contempt? Why, in order to provoke his wrath more quickly in manifestation of your punishment, do you extend to God your crime stained hands when he who has commanded that only holy and unspotted hands be lifted up to him refuses to look at yours? Why do you beseech God with that mouth by which not long ago you spoke evil? Its prayers, however they be multiplied, are an abomination to him.”

“The new moon and the sabbath. Here he removes the celebrations of solemnities. And first, as to the future, he sets down the intent of the prohibition, saying, The new moon. Psalm 80: Blow the trumpet in the new moon, as a sign of your solemn day. The sabbath. Exodus 20: other festivities. Leviticus 23: these are the feasts of the Lord, which you shall call most solemn and most holy. Your assemblies are wicked. Below, 58: behold, in the day of your fast your own will is found, and you exact all your debtors. Second, at your Kalends, as to the present he sets down hatred, saying: Kalends, which above is the new moon. Whence in another Psalter: Sound the trumpet at the beginning of the month. Lamentations 2: the Lord hath delivered over to oblivion in Sion the festival and the sabbath, and to reproach and to the indignation of his fury the king and the priest. Third, as to the past, he sets down weariness, saying: they are become troublesome to me: and he sets down two things: the heaviness of the burden: they are become troublesome, Psalm 37: as a heavy burden they are become heavy upon me: second, the labor of the one who bears it: I have labored in enduring. Isaiah 43: thou hast made me to labor in thy iniquities. And he speaks of God after the manner of men: because it is said to be burdensome for a man to labor at what does not please him. And when you shall stretch forth. He reproves their prayers: and first he sets down the reproof; second the reason for the reproof, at, for your hands. Concerning the first he does two things. First he reproves as to the sign of devotion, at, and when you shall stretch forth. Lamentations 3: let us lift up our hearts with our hands to heaven, to God. And below, 65: all the day I have spread forth my hands to an unbelieving people, who walk in a way that is not good. Second, the prolixity of prayer (at: and when you shall multiply), Proverbs 28: he who turns away his ear that he may not hear the law, his prayer shall be execrable. For your hands are full of blood, which you have shed. Psalm 13: their feet are swift to shed blood. Proverbs 1: keep back thy foot from their paths: for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood. Wash yourselves. Here he sets down wholesome counsel; and concerning this he does three things. First he sets down the efficacious remedy; second the effect of the remedy, at, come; third the punishment against contempt, at, but if you will not. The remedy consists in two things: in the flight from evil and the following of good, at, learn. Evil is put to flight in two ways. By the purging of the past; and as to this he says, wash yourselves, Jeremiah 4: wash thy heart from malice, Jerusalem, that thou mayest be saved: how long shall hurtful thoughts abide in thee? Second, by caution as to the future: and this comes about in three ways. That he not think evil in his heart: be clean. Proverbs 22: he who loves cleanness of heart, for the grace of his lips shall have the king for his friend. That he not fulfill in deed what he has thought: Micah 2: woe to them that devise that which is unprofitable, and work evil in their beds: in the morning light they do it. Take away the evil, namely, the deed. That he not complete what he has begun: cease to act perversely. Jeremiah 2: keep back thy foot from being bare, and thy throat from thirst. A swift runner explaining his ways, in the same, 2. Learn to do well. Here he sets down the remedy as to the following of good: and first that they may learn it; second that they may fulfill it in deed, at, relieve the oppressed. For one works good in ordering himself; and as to this he says, learn to do well. Jeremiah 6: be instructed, Jerusalem, lest perhaps my soul depart from thee, lest perhaps I make thee a desert land, and uninhabitable. In relation to one's neighbor; and this is what he says, seek judgment. Job 29: the cause which I knew not, I searched out most diligently. Jeremiah 6: stand upon the ways, and see, and ask concerning the ancient paths. Relieve the oppressed. Here he sets down the fulfilling of the work in relieving the wretched. Now what makes one wretched is either violence: and as to this he says, relieve the oppressed: Proverbs 24: deliver them that are led to death, and cease not to free them that are drawn to destruction: or the ignorance of youth: judge for the fatherless: Ecclesiasticus 4: be to the fatherless as a father in judging: or the weakness of sex: defend the widow. Job 29: the ear that heard blessed me, and the eye that saw gave witness to me. And come. Here he promises the effect: and concerning this three things are set down. First, the obligation of the one who promises, when he says, come; as if he were to say: if you do what I say, and what I promise does not follow, I bind myself to this, that you may accuse me. This Job lamented, 9: there is none that can reprove both, and lay his hand between the two. Second, the cessation of evils: if your sins be. And he promises specifically the cleansing from sins: because when the cause ceases, the effect ceases; he touches on two kinds of sin. That which is from burning love, which is noted in the scarlet on account of its intense redness, against which he sets the whiteness of cold snow. Job 9: if I shall be washed as it were with snow waters, and my hands shall shine ever so clean, et cetera. And that which is sin from deadening fear, which is noted in the crimson, whose color approaches whiteness: against which he sets wool: Ezekiel 27: in the multitude of divers riches, in wools of the best color; Matthew 28: his countenance, etc.; Daniel 7: his garment white as snow, and his hair like white wool. Third, the restitution of good things is set down: if you be willing, and will hearken, the good things of the land. Psalm 26: I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. You shall eat. Below, 65: behold my servants shall eat, and you shall be hungry. But if you will not. He sets down the punishment against contempt. And first he sets down the contempt, saying: but if you will not, Zechariah 8: I thought to afflict you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath. Second, he threatens the sword of vengeance; the sword shall devour you. Ezekiel 5: I will draw the sword after them, and I will accomplish my fury, and I will cause my indignation to rest upon them. Third, he shows the judgment to be unchangeable: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken. Numbers 23: God is not as a man, that he should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should be changed.”

“And when ye spread forth your hands,.... That is, in prayer, this being a prayer gesture: hence the Targum paraphrases it, "and when the priests spread out their hands to pray for you.'' I will hide mine eyes from you; will not look upon them, nor regard their prayer; see Lam 3:42. yea, when ye make many prayers; as the Scribes and Pharisees did in Christ's time, and thought to be heard for their much speaking, like the Gentiles, Mat 6:7. I will not hear; so as to give an answer, or fulfil their requests: the reason follows, your hands are full of blood; of the prophets of the Lord, of Christ and his followers, whom they put to death.”

“Their self-righteousness, so far as it rested upon sacrifices and festal observances, was now put to shame, and the last inward bulwark of the sham holy nation was destroyed: "And if ye stretch out your hands, I hide my eyes from you; if ye make ever so much praying, I do not hear: your hands are full of blood." Their praying was also an abomination to God. Prayer is something common to man: it is the interpreter of religious feeling, which intervenes and mediates between God and man; (Note: The primary idea of hithpallel and tephillah is not to be obtained from Deu 9:18 and Ezr 10:1, as Dietrich and Frst suppose, who make hithpallel equivalent to hithnappel, to throw one's self down; but from Sa1 2:25, "If a man sin against a man, the authorities right him" (וּפללו אלהים: it is quite a mistake to maintain that Elohim cannot have this meaning), i.e., they can set right the relation which he has disturbed. "But if one sin against Jehovah, who shall mediate for him (מי יתפּלּל־לו, quis intercedat pro eo)?" We may see from this that prayer is regarded as mediation, which sets right and establishes fellowship; and hithpallel signifies to make one's self a healer of divisions, or to settle for one's self, to strive after a settlement (sibi, pro se, intercedere: cf., Job 19:16, hithchannen, sibi propitium facere; Job 13:27, hithchakkah, sibi insculpere, like the Arabic ichtatta, to bound off for one's self).) it is the true spiritual sacrifice. The law contains no command to pray, and, with the exception of Deut 26, no form of prayer. Praying is so natural to man as man, that there was no necessity for any precept to enforce this, the fundamental expression of the true relation to God. The prophet therefore comes to prayer last of all, so as to trace back their sham-holiness, which was corrupt even to this the last foundation, to its real nothingness. "Spread out," parash, or pi pērēsh, to stretch out; used with Cappaim to denote swimming in Isa 25:11. It is written here before a strong suffix, as in many other passages, e.g., Isa 52:12, with the inflection i instead of e. This was the gesture of a man in prayer, who spread out his hands, and when spread out, stretched them towards heaven, or to the most holy place in the temple, and indeed (as if with the feeling of emptiness and need, and with a desire to receive divine gifts) held up the hollow or palm of his hand (Cappaim: cf., tendere palmas, e.g., Virg. Aen. xii. 196, tenditque ad sidera palmas). However much they might stand or lie before Him in the attitude of prayer, Jehovah hid His eyes, i.e., His omniscience knew nothing of it; and even though they might pray loud and long (gam chi, etiamsi: compare the simple Chi, Jer 14:12), He was, as it were, deaf to it all. We should expect Chi here to introduce the explanation; but the more excited the speaker, the shorter and more unconnected his words. The plural damim always denotes human blood as the result of some unnatural act, and then the bloody deed and the bloodguiltiness itself. The plural number neither refers to the quantity nor to the separate drops, but is the plural of production, which Dietrich has so elaborately discussed in his Abhandlung, p. 40. (Note: As Chittah signified corn standing in the field, and Chittim corn threshed and brought to the market, so damim was not blood when flowing through the veins, but when it had flowed out-in other words, when it had been violently shed. (For the Talmudic misinterpretation of the true state of the case, see my Genesis, p. 626.)) The terrible damim stands very emphatically before the governing verb, pointing to many murderous acts that had been committed, and deeds of violence akin to murder. Not, indeed, that we are to understand the words as meaning that there was really blood upon their hands when they stretched them out in prayer; but before God, from whom no outward show can hide the true nature of things, however clean they might have washed themselves, they still dripped with blood. The expostulations of the people against the divine accusations have thus been negatively set forth and met in Isa 1:11-15 : Jehovah could not endure their work-righteous worship, which was thus defiled with unrighteous works, even to murder itself. The divine accusation is now positively established in Isa 1:16, Isa 1:17, by the contrast drawn between the true righteousness of which the accused were destitute, and the false righteousness of which they boasted. The crushing charge is here changed into an admonitory appeal; and the love which is hidden behind the wrath, and would gladly break through, already begins to disclose itself. There are eight admonitions. The first three point to the removal of evil; the other five to the performance of what is good.”