Deceit - The wealth gained by deceit and fraud.

As a cage is full of birds - There is no doubt that the reference here is to a decoy or trap-cage, as Dr. Blayney has rendered it; in these the fowlers put several tame birds, which when the wild ones see, they come and light on the cage, and fall into the snare.

As a cage is full of birds,.... Jarchi and Kimchi understand it of a place in which fowls, are brought up and fattened, what we call a "pen"; and, so the Targum renders it, a house or place of fattening. The word is rendered a "basket" in Amos 8:1 and may here design one in which birds taken in snares, or by hawking, were put. The Septuagint version, and those that follow it, render it, "a snare": which agrees with what goes before. It seems to intend a decoy, in which many birds are put to allure others; and, what with them, and those that are drawn in by them, it becomes very full; and this sense of the comparison is favoured by the rendition or application, which follows:

so are their houses full of deceit; of mammon, gathered by deceit, as Kimchi interprets it; ungodly mammon; riches got in a fraudulent way, by cozening and cheating, tricking and overreaching:

therefore they are become great; in worldly things, and in the esteem of men, and in their own opinion, though of no account with God:

and waxen rich; not with the true riches, the riches of grace, the unsearchable riches of Christ, his durable riches and righteousness; nor indeed with the riches of the world, honestly and lawfully gotten; but with unrighteous mammon.

As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.

5:27 Their houses - They fill their houses with the goods of those they deceive, and over - reach.

cage: or, coop

27. full of deceit-full of treasures got by deceit.

rich-(Ps 73:12, 18-20).

5:19-31 Unhumbled hearts are ready to charge God with being unjust in their afflictions. But they may read their sin in their punishment. If men will inquire wherefore the Lord doeth hard things unto them, let them think of their sins. The restless waves obeyed the Divine decree, that they should not pass the sandy shores, which were as much a restraint as lofty mountains; but they burst all restraints of God's law, and were wholly gone into wickedness. Neither did they consider their interest. While the Lord, year after year, reserves to us the appointed weeks of harvest, men live on his bounty; yet they transgress against him. Sin deprives us of God's blessings; it makes the heaven as brass, and the earth as iron. Certainly the things of this world are not the best things; and we are not to think, that, because evil men prosper, God allows their practices. Though sentence against evil works is not executed speedily, it will be executed. Shall I not visit for these things? This speaks the certainty and the necessity of God's judgments. Let those who walk in bad ways consider that an end will come, and there will be bitterness in the latter end.