Nor have mercy on their fatherless and widows;
For everyone is a hypocrite and an evildoer,
And every mouth speaks1 folly.
bFor all this His anger is not turned away,
But His hand is stretched out still.
It shall devour the briers and thorns,
And kindle in the thickets of the forest;
They shall mount up like rising smoke.
aThe land is burned up,
And the people shall be as fuel for the fire;
bNo man shall spare his brother.
And be hungry;
He shall devour on the left hand
aAnd not be satisfied;
bEvery man shall eat the flesh of his own arm.
Together they shall be aagainst Judah.
bFor all this His anger is not turned away,
But His hand is stretched out still.
| << Isaiah 9:17 | Isaiah 9:19 >> |
Isaiah 9:18
For wickedness - Wickedness rageth like a fire, destroying and laying waste the nation: but it shall be its own destruction, by bringing down the fire of God' s wrath, which shall burn up the briers and the thorns; that is, the wicked themselves. Briers and thorns are an image frequently applied in Scripture, when set on fire, to the rage of the wicked; violent, yet impotent, and of no long continuance. "They are extinct as the fire of thorns," Psalms 118:12. To the wicked themselves, as useless and unprofitable, proper objects of God' s wrath, to be burned up, or driven away by the wind. "As thorns cut up they shall be consumed in the fire," Isaiah 33:12. Both these ideas seem to be joined in Psalms 58:9 : -
"Before your pots shall feel the thorn,
As well the green as the dry, the tempest shall bear them away."
The green and the dry is a proverbial expression, meaning all sorts of them, good and bad, great and small, etc. So Ezekiel: "Behold, I will kindle a fire, and it shall devour every green tree, and every dry tree," Ezekiel 20:47. D' Herbelot quotes a Persian poet describing a pestilence under the image of a conflagration: "This was a lightning that, falling upon a forest, consumed there the green wood with the dry." See Harmer' s Observations, Vol. II., p. 187.
| << Isaiah 9:17 | Isaiah 9:19 >> |
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