And his breath as an overflowing stream
Which comes with great swiftness and force, bearing all before
it, breathing out nothing but the fire of divine wrath, before
which there is no standing; nor could the Assyrian army stand
before it, but suddenly, in a moment, was carried away with the
force of it: thus our Lord will consume the man of sin with the
spirit or breath of his mouth, and destroy him with the
brightness of his coming, ( 2
Thessalonians 2:8 ) : and this stream
shall reach to the midst of the neck;
which shows the extreme danger the army would be in, as a man
that is up to the neck in water, and can find no way of escaping;
and very aptly represents their state and condition, the whole
body of the army being encompassed and destroyed by this
overflowing stream of divine wrath, only their head, their king
Sennacherib was saved; and he in a little time was cut off, when
he had got into his country; as the Assyrian army served the
Jews, they are served themselves; see ( Isaiah 8:7 Isaiah 8:8 ) :
to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity;
that is, the breath, wind, or Spirit of the Lord, compared to an
overflowing stream, should be of this use, and have this effect,
to sift the people of several nations, of which the Assyrian army
consisted, so as to dash them one against another, and utterly
destroy them; for they were to be sifted, not with a good and
profitable sieve, which retains the corn, and shakes out the
chaff, or so as to have some taken out and spared; but with a
sieve that lets all through, and so be brought to nothing, as the
Vulgate Latin version; and thus will all the antichristian
nations be agitated, and shaken, and destroyed, ere long:
and [there shall be] a bridle in the jaws of the people,
causing
[them] to err;
from the way they intended to go, namely, up to Jerusalem, and
take and sack it, and obliging them to betake themselves another
way for their retreat and safety; see ( Isaiah 37:29
) .