Isa 1:31

“the[ir] strength with which they take from the poor by force and rob them and strengthen themselves with the money. That money will become as tow, which is shaken out of the flax, which is light and easily ignited. and its perpetrator The one who amasses this power will become as a spark of fire, and they will burn, one with the other. as a spark Heb. וּפֹעֲלוֹ לְנִיצוֹץ, estencele in O.F. [etincelle in modern French], a spark. Jonathan renders וְעוֹבַד יְדֵיהוֹן, and the work of their hands. This does not follow the Hebrew, however, for, were it so, it would have to be voweled וּפָעֳלוּ with a ‘kamatz- chatuf,’ a hurried ‘kamatz,’ and it would be explained as an expression of work. Now, that it is voweled with a ‘cholam,’ it is an expression of a worker, or perpetrator. with no one to extinguish Jonathan renders: And no one will pity them.”

“החסון. The strong. Adjective; the substantive is חוסן strength. נעורת Tow. That which is shaken off (נער to shake) from the flax. לניצוץ As a spark (comp. Ez. 1:7). This verse refers to the idols, which are made strong, that they should not shake, but which those who formed them will burn in time of trouble, because they helped not; but the workmen themselves will likewise be burnt; .. this is meant by and they will both burn. (Comp. Exod. 3:3.) And none shall quench. And none shall help.”

“And the strong shall be as tow,.... "that strong one", who is eminently so; the little horn, whose look is more stout than his fellows, Dan 7:20 the beast who had great power and authority given by the dragon, Rev 13:2 who shall be cast alive into the lake of fire; when he will be like tow in those devouring flames, easily, quickly, and irrecoverably consumed, Dan 7:11, Rev 19:20. and the maker of it as a spark, or "his work"; so the Targum, "and the work of their hands shall be as a spark of fire;'' or like the embers and ashes of a coal, which are blown away and lost at once: so antichrist, and all his evil works, as well as all his evil workers under him, will be entirely consumed: or, as it may be rendered, "he that wrought him": that is, Satan, for his coming is after the working of Satan; he has his seat, power, and authority, from the dragon, the old serpent, and the devil, and may be truly called a creature of his, Th2 2:9. and they shall both burn together; both the pope and the devil in the lake of fire and brimstone, into which they will both be cast, Rev 20:10. and none shall quench them; that fire will be unquenchable and everlasting; they will be tormented for ever and ever, and so will all the worshippers of the beast, Mat 25:41. The Chaldee paraphrase is, "so the wicked shall be consumed, and their evil works, and there shall be no mercy upon them.'' Next: Isaiah Chapter 2”

“It. The efforts of Achan and Ezechias against the enemy proved in vain. (Calmet) Bible Text & Cross-references: The prophet complains of the sins of Juda and Jerusalem: and exhorts them to a sincere conversion. 1 The vision of Isaias, the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Juda and Jerusalem in the days of Ozias, *Joathan, Achaz, and Ezechias, kings of Juda. 2 Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children, *and exalted them, but they have despised me. 3 The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel hath not known me, and my people hath not understood. 4 Woe to the sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a wicked seed, ungracious children: they have forsaken the Lord, they have blasphemed the holy One of Israel, they are gone away backwards. 5 For what shall I strike you any more, you that increase transgression? the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is sad. 6 From the sole of the foot unto the top of the head, there is no soundness therein: wounds and bruises, and swelling sores: they are not bound up, nor dressed, nor fomented with oil. 7 *Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your country strangers devour before your face, and it shall be desolate as when wasted by enemies. 8 And the daughter of Sion shall be left as a covert in a vineyard, and as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, and as a city that is laid waste. 9 *Except the Lord of hosts had left us seed, **we had been as Sodom, and we should have been like to Gomorrha. 10 Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha. 11 *To what purpose do you offer me the multitude of your victims, saith the Lord? I am full, I desire not holocausts of rams, and fat of fatlings, and blood of calves, and lambs, and buck-goats. 12 When you came to appear before me, who required these things at your hands, that you should walk in my courts? 13 Offer sacrifice no more in vain: incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, and the sabbaths, and other festivals, I will not abide, your assemblies are wicked. 14 My soul hateth your new moons, and your solemnities: they are become troublesome to me, I am weary of bearing them. 15 And when you stretch forth your hands, I will turn away my eyes from you: and when you multiply prayer, I will not hear: *for your hands are full of blood. 16 *Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from my eyes: cease to do perversely, 17 Learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow. 18 And then come, and accuse me, saith the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool. 19 If you be willing, and will hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the land. 20 But if you will not, and will provoke me to wrath: the sword shall devour you, because the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. 21 How is the faithful city, that was full of judgment, become a harlot? justice dwelt in it, but now murderers. 22 Thy silver is turned into dross: thy wine is mingled with water. 23 Thy princes are faithless, companions of thieves: they all love bribes, they run after rewards. *They judge not for the fatherless: and the widow’s cause cometh not in to them. 24 Therefore, saith the Lord, the God of hosts, the mighty one of Israel: Ah! I will comfort myself over my adversaries: and I will be revenged of my enemies. 25 And I will turn my hand to thee, and I will clean purge away thy dross, and I will take away all thy tin. 26 And I will restore thy judges as they were before, and thy counsellors as of old. After this thou shalt be called the city of the just, a faithful city. 27 Sion shall be redeemed in judgment, and they shall bring her back in justice. 28 And he shall destroy the wicked, and the sinners together: and they that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed. 29 For they shall be confounded for the idols, to which they have sacrificed: and you shall be ashamed of the gardens which you had chosen. 30 When you shall be as an oak with the leaves falling off, and as a garden without water. 31 And your strength shall be as the ashes of tow, and your work as a spark: and both shall burn together, and there shall be none to quench it.”

“Isa 1:31 shows in a third figure where this spark was to come from: "And the rich man becomes tow, and his work the spark; and they will both burn together, and no one extinguishes them." The form poalo suggests at first a participial meaning (its maker), but החסון would be a very unusual epithet to apply to an idol. Moreover, the figure itself would be a distorted one, since the natural order would be, that the idol would be the thing that kindled the fire, and the man the object to be set on fire, and not the reverse. We therefore follow the lxx, Targ., and Vulg., with Gesenius and other more recent grammarians, and adopt the rendering "his work" (opus ejus). The forms פּעלו and פּעלו (cf., Isa 52:14 and Jer 22:13) are two equally admissible changes of the ground-form פעלו (פּעלו). As Isa 1:29 refers to idolatrous worship, poalo (his work) is an idol, a god made by human hands (cf., Isa 2:8; Isa 37:19, etc.). The prosperous idolater, who could give gold and silver for idolatrous images out of the abundance of his possessions (Châson is to be interpreted in accordance with Isa 33:6), becomes tow (talm. "the refuse of flax:" the radical meaning is to shake out, viz., in combing), and the idol the spark which sets this mass of fibre in flames, so that they are both irretrievably consumed. For the fire of judgment, by which sinners are devoured, need not come from without. Sin carries the fire of indignation within itself. And an idol is, as it were, an idolater's sin embodied and exposed to the light of day. The date of the composition of this first prophecy is a puzzle. Caspari thoroughly investigated every imaginary possibility, and at last adopted the conclusion that it dates from the time of Uzziah, inasmuch as Isa 1:7-9 do not relate to an actual, but merely to an ideal, present. But notwithstanding all the acuteness with which Caspari has worked out his view, it still remains a very forced one. The oftener we return to the reading of this prophetic address, the stronger is our impression that Isa 1:7-9 contain a description of the state of things which really existed at the time when the words were spoken. There were actually two devastations of the land of Judah which occurred during the ministry of Isaiah, and in which Jerusalem was only spared by the miraculous interposition of Jehovah: one under Ahaz in the year of the Syro-Ephraimitish war; the other under Hezekiah, when the Assyrian forces laid the land waste but were scattered at last in their attack upon Jerusalem. The year of the Syro-Ephraimitish war is supported by Gesenius, Rosenmller (who expresses a different opinion in every one of the three editions of his Scholia), Maurer, Movers, Knobel, Hvernick, and others; the time of the Assyrian oppression by Hitzig, Umbreit, Drechsler, and Luzzatto. Now, whichever of these views we may adopt, there will still remain, as a test of its admissiblity, the difficult question, How did this prophecy come to stand at the head of the book, if it belonged to the time of Uzziah-Jotham? This question, upon which the solution of the difficulty depends, can only be settled when we come to Isa 6:1-13. Till then, the date of the composition of chapter 1 must be left undecided. It is enough for the present to know, that, according to the accounts given in the books of Kings and Chronicles, there were two occasions when the situation of Jerusalem resembled the one described in the present chapter.”