Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

Impending Disaster

The word of the L ord came to me: ²You, O mortal, thus says the Lord G od to the land of Israel:

An end! The end has come

upon the four corners of the land.

Now the end is upon you,

I will let loose my anger upon you;

I will judge you according to your ways,

I will punish you for all your abominations.

My eye will not spare you, I will have no pity.

I will punish you for your ways,

while your abominations are among you.

Then you shall know that I am the L ord.

⁵ Thus says the Lord G od:

Disaster after disaster! See, it comes.

An end has come, the end has come.

It has awakened against you; see, it comes!

Your doom has come to you,

O inhabitant of the land.

The time has come, the day is near—

of tumult, not of reveling on the mountains.

Soon now I will pour out my wrath upon you;

I will spend my anger against you.

I will judge you according to your ways,

and punish you for all your abominations.

My eye will not spare; I will have no pity.

I will punish you according to your ways,

while your abominations are among you.

Then you shall know that it is I the L ord who strike.

See, the day! See, it comes!

Your doom has gone out.

The rod has blossomed, pride has budded.

Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness.

None of them shall remain,

not their abundance, not their wealth;

no pre-eminence among them.

The time has come, the day draws near;

let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn,

for wrath is upon all their multitude.

¹³ For the sellers shall not return to what has been sold as long as they remain alive. For the vision concerns all their multitude; it shall not be revoked. Because of their iniquity, they cannot maintain their lives.

They have blown the horn and made everything ready;

but no one goes to battle,

for my wrath is upon all their multitude.

The sword is outside, pestilence and famine are inside;

those in the field die by the sword;

those in the city—famine and pestilence devour them.

If any survivors escape,

they shall be found on the mountains

like doves of the valleys,

all of them moaning over their iniquity.

All hands shall grow feeble,

all knees turn to water.

They shall put on sackcloth,

horror shall cover them.

Shame shall be on all faces,

baldness on all their heads.

They shall fling their silver into the streets,

their gold shall be treated as unclean.

Their silver and gold cannot save them on the day of the wrath of the L ord. They shall not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. ²⁰From their beautiful ornament, in which they took pride, they made their abominable images, their detestable things; therefore I will make of it an unclean thing to them.

I will hand it over to strangers as booty,

to the wicked of the earth as plunder;

they shall profane it.

I will avert my face from them,

so that they may profane my treasured place;

the violent shall enter it,

they shall profane it.

Make a chain!

For the land is full of bloody crimes;

the city is full of violence.

I will bring the worst of the nations

to take possession of their houses.

I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong,

and their holy places shall be profaned.

When anguish comes, they will seek peace,

but there shall be none.

Disaster comes upon disaster,

rumor follows rumor;

they shall keep seeking a vision from the prophet;

instruction shall perish from the priest,

and counsel from the elders.

The king shall mourn,

the prince shall be wrapped in despair,

and the hands of the people of the land shall tremble.

According to their way I will deal with them;

according to their own judgments I will judge them.

And they shall know that I am the L ord.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Now he uses another word. He says, the morning is come, though some translate kingdom, but erroneously. For although צפירה, tzephireh, is a turban sometimes, or a royal diadem, yet the Prophet’s language is distorted when they say that the kingdom was transferred, or taken over to the Babylonians. But the sentence flows best — the morning cometh By “the morning” he implies what he had said before, namely, the hastening of God’s vengeance. As, therefore, he said the end was watching, since God was hastening to take vengeance, so also he says, the morning is come to them, and then rouses them from that drowsiness in which they had grown torpid. We know that hypocrites commit all their sins as if no eye were upon them; as long as God is silent and at rest they revel without shame or fear. But the chosen remain faithful even in secret; but God’s word always shines before them, as Peter says — ye do well when ye attend to the Prophetic word, as a lamp shining in darkness. (2 Peter 1:19.) Although the faithful may be surrounded by darkness, yet they direct their eye to the light of celestial doctrine, so that they are watchful, and are not children of the night and of darkness, as Paul says. (1 Thessalonians 5:4,5.) But the impious are, as it were, immersed in darkness, and think they shall enjoy perpetual night. As the rising morning dispels the darkness of night, so also God’s judgment, on its sudden appearance, strikes the reprobate with unexpected terror, but too late.

For this reason, then, the Prophet says, that morning is come to the Israelites, because they had promised themselves perpetual night, as if they were never to be called upon to render an account of their conduct. We see, therefore, that he alludes suitably to that torpor which was the cause of their obstinacy, when they thought themselves safe in their hiding-places. Hence he laughs at their perverse confidence, who promise themselves impunity because they are in night. For the morning, he says, will immediately seize upon you; hence morning is coming upon thee, O inhabitant of the land; afterwards, the time is come: עת, gneth, properly signifies all appointed or determined time. Hence the Prophet meant that the time had come which God had fixed beforehand for his judgment, and thus he takes away from the impious the material for pride, for they always suppose that God is as it were asleep when he does not attack them at the very first moment. He speaks, therefore, of an appointed time, as in other places the Prophets usually do, and frequently of the year of visitation. He signifies the same thing when he says, the day of tumult, or noise, is at hand. This member of the sentence answers to the former. He had said the end was watching; he had said that the judgment was hastening on: now simply and without figure he says, the day is at hand, קרוב, krob, a day, I say, of noise, and not the echo of the mountains, says he; that is, it shall not be an empty resounding, as when a. sound is produced among the mountains a concussion arises, and since the sounds which are uttered there, when taken up by the neighboring mountains, return to their own place, and thus a greater resounding occurs, called echo. The Prophet therefore says, that the clamor of which he speaks should not be an echo, that is, an empty resounding, because all should seriously cry out. Some think הד, hed, means “acclamations,” which is properly הידד, hided; it is, indeed, from the same root, but הר, her, is used in the same sense. But if this explanation seems better, the Prophet will allude to mountains, not lofty, but vine-bearing, as many were in the land of Israel. But the other explanation is preferable, namely, there shall be the sound of a tumult, not on account of the reverberation, as they say, but because every one should cry out, until sorrow and crying should abound on every side. It follows —