Isaiah 3:1-3 For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, does take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread… In the humble cottage on some mountain slope, in some shaded valley or distant forest, or in the living wilderness of some great city, are the young and the old, the brave and the fair, passing away in unbroken procession to the dust of the sepulchre, and to the destinies of the life to come But the great world without does not regard it. Like the leaves of autumn that strew our pathway, they sink into the grave, and their death is crowded from recollection by the never-ending succession of new events. But when the tall and graceful trees of the forest — the monarchs whose heads towered above the general altitude — are brought down by some resistless blow, their fall is attended with a louder crash, and the earth itself trembles beneath the shock: so, when the men who walk upon the loftier heights of place and power, when those whose intellectual stature as they move along the paths of science, of history, of literature, and of art, renders them preeminent above the general mass, are laid prostrate by the stroke of death, the event impresses itself more vividly upon the minds of men, and calls out from its hidden springs in the heart a profounder sentiment of sorrow. (J. A. Todd.) Parallel Verses KJV: For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, |
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