Isaiah 24:3

The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

24:1-12 All whose treasures and happiness are laid up on earth, will soon be brought to want and misery. It is good to apply to ourselves what the Scripture says of the vanity and vexation of spirit which attend all things here below. Sin has turned the earth upside down; the earth is become quite different to man, from what it was when God first made it to be his habitation. It is, at the best, like a flower, which withers in the hands of those that please themselves with it, and lay it in their bosoms. The world we live in is a world of disappointment, a vale of tears; the children of men in it are but of few days, and full of trouble, See the power of God's curse, how it makes all empty, and lays waste all ranks and conditions. Sin brings these calamities upon the earth; it is polluted by the sins of men, therefore it is made desolate by God's judgments. Carnal joy will soon be at end, and the end of it is heaviness. God has many ways to imbitter wine and strong drink to those who love them; distemper of body, anguish of mind, and the ruin of the estate, will make strong drink bitter, and the delights of sense tasteless. Let men learn to mourn for sin, and rejoice in God; then no man, no event, can take their joy from them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The land - Hebrew, 'The earth,' as in Isaiah 24:1. It is here rendered correctly 'the land,' as it should have been there - meaning the land of Canaan.

And spoiled - Its valuable possessions shall become the prey of the invading foe. This is an emphatic repetition of the declaration in Isaiah 24:1, to show the absolute certainty of that which was threatened.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2. as with the people, so with the priest—All alike shall share the same calamity: no favored class shall escape (compare Eze 7:12, 13; Ho 4:9; Re 6:15).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled,.... Entirely emptied of its inhabitants, and wholly spoiled of its riches and substance; this is repeated, and with greater strength, to confirm what is before said, and which receives a greater confirmation by what follows:

for the Lord hath spoken this word; who is able to perform it, and who is faithful to his threatenings, as to his promises; not a word of his shall ever fail; the judgments threatened to the antichristian world are his true and faithful sayings; and the ruin of Rome is certain, because strong is the Lord that judgeth her, Revelation 18:8.

Geneva Study Bible

The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

3. For land read earth as Isaiah 24:1; Isaiah 24:4, &c.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 3. - The land; rather, the earth. The same word is used as in ver. I (arets). Utterly spoiled; i.e. "wasted by rival armies, which have carried fire and sword over the whole of it." Compare the declaration of our Lord, "Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.., all these are the beginning of sorrows" (Matthew 24:6-8). Isaiah 24:3

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

It is thoroughly characteristic of Isaiah, that the commencement of this prophecy, like Isaiah 19:1, places us at once in the very midst of the catastrophe, and condenses the contents of the subsequent picture of judgment into a few rapid, vigorous, vivid, and comprehensive clauses (like Isaiah 15:1; Isaiah 17:1; Isaiah 23:1, cf., Isaiah 33:1). "Behold, Jehovah emptieth the earth, and layeth it waste, and marreth its form, and scattereth its inhabitants. And it happeneth, as to the people, so to the priest; as to the servant, so to his master; as to the maid, so to her mistress; as to the buyer, so to the seller; as to the lender, so to the borrower; as to the creditor, so to the debtor. Emptying the earth is emptied, and plundering is plundered: for Jehovah hat spoken this word." The question, whether the prophet is speaking of a past of future judgment, which is one of importance to the interpretation of the whole, is answered by the fact that with Isaiah "hinnēh" (behold) always refers to something future (Isaiah 3:1; Isaiah 17:1; Isaiah 19:1; Isaiah 30:27, etc.). And it is only in his case, that we do meet with prophecies commencing so immediately with hinnēh. Those in Jeremiah which approach this the most nearly (viz., Jeremiah 47:2; Jeremiah 49:35, cf., Isaiah 51:1, and Ezekiel 29:3) do indeed commence with hinnēh, but not without being preceded by an introductory formula. The opening "behold" corresponds to the confirmatory "for Jehovah hath spoken," which is always employed by Isaiah at the close of statements with regard to the future and occurs chiefly,

(Note: Vid., Isaiah 1:20; Isaiah 21:17; Isaiah 22:25; Isaiah 25:8; Isaiah 40:5; Isaiah 58:14; also compare Isaiah 19:4; Isaiah 16:13, and Isaiah 37:22.)

though not exclusively,

(Note: Vid., Obadiah 1:18, Joel 3:8, Micah 4:4; 1 Kings 14:11.)

in the book of Isaiah, whom we may recognise in the detailed description in Isaiah 24:2 (vid., Isaiah 2:12-16; Isaiah 3:2-3, Isaiah 3:18-23, as compared with Isaiah 9:13; also with the description of judgment in Isaiah 19:2-4, which closes in a similar manner). Thus at the very outset we meet with Isaiah's peculiarities; and Caspari is right in saying that no prophecy could possibly commence with more of the characteristics of Isaiah than the prophecy before us. The play upon words commences at the very outset. Bâkak and bâlak (compare the Arabic ballūka, a blank, naked desert) have the same ring, just as in Nahum 2:11, cf., Isaiah 24:3, and Jeremiah 51:2. The niphal futures are intentionally written like verbs Pe-Vâv (tibbōk and tibbōz, instead of tibbak and tibbaz), for the purpose of making them rhyme with the infinitive absolutes (cf., Isaiah 22:13). So, again, caggebirtâh is so written instead of cigbirtâh, to produce a greater resemblance to the opening syllable of the other words. The form נשׁה is interchanged with נשׁא) (as in 1 Samuel 22:2), or, according to Kimchi's way of writing it, with נשׁא) (written with tzere), just as in other passages we meet with נשׁא along with נשׁה, and, judging from Arab. ns', to postpone or credit, the former is the primary form. Nōsheh is the creditor, and בו נשׁא אשׁר is not the person who has borrowed of him, but, as נשה invariably signifies to credit (hiphil, to give credit), the person whom he credits (with ב obj., like בּ נגשׂ in Isaiah 9:3), not "the person through whom he is נשׁא)" (Hitzig on Jeremiah 15:10). Hence, "lender and borrower, creditor and debtor" (or taker of credit). It is a judgment which embraces all, without distinction of rank and condition; and it is a universal one, not merely throughout the whole of the land of Israel (as even Drechsler renders הארץ), but in all the earth; for as Arndt correctly observes, הארץ signifies "the earth" in this passage, including, as in Isaiah 11:4, the ethical New Testament idea of "the world" (kosmos).