Isaiah 37:27

27 The people who lived there were powerless; they were frightened and stunned. They were like grass in a field or weeds growing on a roof when the hot east wind blasts them.

Isaiah 37:27 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 37:27

Therefore their inhabitants were of small power
Or, "short of hand" ^F21; it was not in the power of their hands to help themselves, because the Lord took away their strength, having determined that they should be destroyed for their sins; otherwise it would not have been in the power of Sennacherib to have subdued them; this takes off greatly from the king of Assyria's triumph, that they were a weak people, whom he had conquered, and were given up into his hands by the Lord, according to his purposes, or he had never been lord over them: they were dismayed and confounded;
not so much at the sight of Sennacherib's army, but because the Lord had dispirited them, and took away their natural courage from them, so that they became an easy prey to him: they were as the grass of the field:
which has no strength to stand before the mower: and as the green herb;
which is easily cropped with the hand of man, or eaten by the beasts of the field: as the grass on the housetops:
which has no matter of root, and is dried up with the heat of the sun: and as corn blasted before it be grown up;
before it rises up into anything of a stalk, and much less into ears; so the Targum,

``which is blasted before it comes to be ears;''

all which represent the feeble condition of the people overcome by him; so that he had not so much to glory of, as having done mighty things.

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FOOTNOTES:

F21 (dy yruq) breviati, "vel breves manu", Forerius; "abbreviati manu", Vatablus, Montanus.

Isaiah 37:27 In-Context

25 You boasted that you dug wells and drank water in foreign lands, and that the feet of your soldiers tramped the Nile River dry.

26 "Have you never heard that I planned all this long ago? And now I have carried it out. I gave you the power to turn fortified cities into piles of rubble.

27 The people who lived there were powerless; they were frightened and stunned. They were like grass in a field or weeds growing on a roof when the hot east wind blasts them.

28 "But I know everything about you, what you do and where you go. I know how you rage against me.

29 I have received the report of that rage and that pride of yours, and now I will put a hook through your nose and a bit in your mouth and will take you back by the same road you came."

Footnotes

• [a]. [Probable text] when the hot east wind blasts them; [Hebrew] blasted before they are grown.