Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
master and . . . scholar—literally, "him that watcheth and him that answereth." So "wakeneth" is used of the teacher or "master" (Isaiah 50:4); masters are watchful in guarding their scholars. The reference is to the priests, who ought to have taught the people piety, but who led them into evil. "Him that answereth" is the scholar who has to answer the questions of his teacher (Luke 2:47) [GROTIUS]. The Arabs have a proverb, "None calling and none answering," that is, there being not one alive. So GESENIUS explains it of the Levite watches in the temple (Psalms 134:1), one watchman calling and another answering. But the scholar is rather the people, the pupils of the priests "in doing this," namely, forming unions with foreign wives. "Out of the tabernacles of Jacob" proves it is not the priests alone. God will spare neither priests nor people who act so.
him that offereth—His offerings will not avail to shield him from the penalty of his sin in repudiating his Jewish wife and taking a foreign one.
Reproof of those who contracted marriages with foreigners and repudiated their Jewish wives.
Have we not all one father?—Why, seeing we all have one common origin, "do we deal treacherously against one another" ("His brother" being a general expression implying that all are "brethren" and sisters as children of the same Father above, I Thessalonians 4:3-6 and so including the wives so injured)? namely, by putting away our Jewish wives, and taking foreign women to wife (compare Malachi 2:14 and Malachi 2:11; Ezra 9:1-9), and so violating "the covenant" made by Jehovah with "our fathers," by which it was ordained that we should be a people separated from the other peoples of the world (Exodus 19:5; Leviticus 20:24, Leviticus 20:26; Deuteronomy 7:3). To intermarry with the heathen would defeat this purpose of Jehovah, who was the common Father of the Israelites in a peculiar sense in which He was not Father of the heathen. The "one Father" is Jehovah (Job 31:15; I Corinthians 8:6; Ephesians 4:6). "Created us": not merely physical creation, but "created us" to be His peculiar and chosen people (Psalms 102:18; Isaiah 43:1; Isaiah 45:8; Isaiah 60:21; Ephesians 2:10), [CALVIN]. How marked the contrast between the honor here done to the female sex, and the degradation to which Oriental women are generally subjected!
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