Isaiah 10:3

3 What will you do on 1the day of punishment, in the ruin that will come 2from afar? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth?

Isaiah 10:3 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 10:3

And what will ye do in the day of visitation
Not in a way of grace and mercy, but of wrath and anger, as the following clause explains it, when God should come and punish them for their sins; and so the Targum,

``what will ye do in the day that your sins shall be visited upon you?''
it designs the Babylonish captivity, as the next words show; the same phrase is used of the destruction of the Jews by the Romans, ( Luke 19:44 ) : and in the desolation [which] shall come from far?
from Assyria, which was distant from the land of Judea: the word F8 for "desolation" signifies a storm, tumult, noise, and confusion; referring to what would be made by the Assyrian army, when it came upon them: to whom will ye flee for help?
Rezin king of Syria, their confederate, being destroyed; and Syria, with whom they were in alliance, now become their enemy, see ( Isaiah 9:11 Isaiah 9:12 ) : and where will ye leave your glory?
either their high titles, and ensigns of honour, as princes, judges, and civil magistrates, which they should be stripped of; or rather their mammon, as Aben Ezra interprets it, their unrighteous mammon, which they got by perverting the judgment of the poor and needy, the widow and the fatherless, of which they gloried; and which now would be taken away from them, when they should go into captivity.
FOOTNOTES:

F8 (hawvl) "sub procella, quae a longinquo veniet", Cocceius; so the Targum renders it, "in tumult of tribulation".

Isaiah 10:3 In-Context

1 Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression,
2 to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!
3 What will you do on the day of punishment, in the ruin that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth?
4 Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.
5 Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!

Cross References 2

  • 1. Jeremiah 5:29; Hosea 9:7; [Luke 19:44]
  • 2. Isaiah 5:26
The English Standard Version is published with the permission of Good News Publishers.