In this verse their evil doings are traced to an evil spirit of whoredoms that is, of idolatries, which impels them blindly and resistlessly to evil, while at the same time it expels the knowledge of God.
The first clause is differently rendered. The textual rendering of the Authorized Version, viz. they will not frame (literally, give, direct) their doings to turn unto their God, denotes their total and absolute refusal to repent or to bring forth fruits meet for repentance.
The actions are an index of the state of the heart, but neither the thoughts of Israel at this time, nor their deeds which indicated these thoughts, were in the direction of repentance. In heart and life they were impenitent.
This rendering is supported by most of the Hebrew commentators. Rashi says, "They forsake not their evil way;" Aben Ezra," They perform not works so as to turn." Kimchi also gives an alternative sense: "Or the sense of the words is thus: They cling so closely to their evil works, that even should they for once conceive in their heart the idea of turning, they immediately repent them of it."
The marginal rendering also yields a good sense; it is, Their doings will not suffer (allow) [them] to turn unto their God. The pronominal suffix for "them" is wanting, yet it may be dispensed with, as the appending of it to "doings" and "God" makes the sense sufficiently explicit.
It is favored by Ewald, Keil, the Targum, and Kimchi, who explains: "Their evil works do not allow them to return to their God, as if he said, To such extent have they multiplied transgression that there is no way left them to return, until they receive their punishment."
Such and so great was the power of their evil habits that they could not break them off or break away from them by repentance; or so intimately connected is a change of heart with a change of life that, in the absence of the latter, the former is impossible.
According to either rendering, the reason assigned is contained in the next clause: For the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord. So overmastered were they, as though by some fiendish spirit that held them in check and exercised despotic power over them, that they rushed headlong down the steep incline, like the Gadarene herd of swine, which, when the unclean spirits entered into them, ran violently down a steep place into the sea.
Neither was there any counteracting force to turn them back or reverse their course. Such a force might have been found in the knowledge of God, of his covenant mercy, of his power, love, grace, and goodrich.
But this was wanting, and the absence of this knowledge at once increased their impenitence and aggravated their guilt. It was Israel's privilege and Israel's duty to know the Lord; for he had revealed himself to them as to no other nation; he had given them his Law, he had made them depositaries of his truth and the conservators of his living oracles; their ignorance, therefore, was altogether inexcusable, while it evinced greatest ingratitude to Jehovah, who had taken them into covenant with himself, and declared himself to be their God.