Note 1 — ISAIAH. (continued 7)
Reading edition
Civil war and foreign invasion shall rage through this reprobate people like the fire with which the husbandman clears the ground of briers and thorns. The wickedness of the land becomes its own punishment, and burns with a fury which is indeed the wrath of God, while its fuel is the people themselves.—Strachey.
Wickedness, i.e., the constant thirst of evil, is a fire which a man kindles in himself. And when the grace of God which daps and restrains this fire is all over, it is sure to burst forth. . . . The fire, into which this wickedness bursts forth, seizes individuals first of all; and then, like a forest fire, it seizes upon the nation at large in all its ranks and members, who roll up in the form of ascending smoke. . . . In its historical manifestation, this judgment consisted in the most inhuman self-destruction during an anarchial civil war.—Delitzsch.
The picture of guilt grows darker still. It is like destroying fire in the jungle of a forest. The confusion and misery thus caused are like the volumes of smoke that mount up in whirling eddies from such a conflagration.—Birks.