22. For a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
23. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.
24. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.
25. The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.
These are the vials of retributive judgment poured out on Israel, first for her persistent idolatries; last for her murder of her King Messiah. The fire is thought of as burning deep; not merely skimming the surface but penetrating to the deep foundations of her mountains. “Hell” here is not to be taken in its modern usage—the place of future punishment—but in the early Hebrew sense as lying below the earth’s surface—the “pit” into which Korah and his company went down.——“Burnt with hunger” (v. 24) is more literally exhausted, their vitality sucked out of them by famine—a fearful doom!——The sword abroad and terror at home (literally, “in the chambers”), shall bereave [Heb.] both the young man and the virgin—a calamity well compared to bereavement of most loved offspring.
26. I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men:
27. Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.
28. For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.
The thought is that for these great sins the Lord would have utterly annihilated Israel were it not for the honor of his name before the nations as their recognized God.——The word for “scatter into corners” means rather, to blow away as with his powerful breath.——It is not precisely the “wrath” of the enemy, but rather the reproaches, or the underlying spirit which would manifest itself in insult and haughty exultation.The context shows the true idea. Lest they should say “Israel is down because our hand is high and our power resistless. We have done it. Their God is far enough from being Almighty.”——“Behave themselves strangely” should rather be—should reason strangely; should make this strange inference, that the fall of Israel was due to their own great power, rather than to God’s forsaking them for their great sin.
29. O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!