And they shall make a noise against them that day, like the roaring of the sea; we shall look towards the land, and behold darkness of tribulation, and the light is darkened with the mist thereof.

“And he will growl That enemy [will growl] at the people of the Lord, mentioned above. like the growling of the sea whose waves roar, so will he come with roaring armies. and he will look to the land Heb. וְנִבַּט, an expression of looking. Israel will look and hope that the kings of the land, upon whom they rely, will assist them, like the matter that is stated (infra 31:1): “Those who go down to Egypt for aid.” and behold darkness for they will have no support. וְנִבַּט is in the passive voice (נִפְעַל) like וְלֹא נִפְתַּח, will not open up, וְלֹא נִתַּק, will not be torn, and the ‘vav’ causes the tense to be reversed to the future. Ediert esvuardeyd in O.F. the distressed one and the light shall darken Comp. (infra 31:3) “And the helper shall stumble and the one who is helped shall fall.” He who is distressed, upon whom the trouble has come, as well as he who comes to bring light to him, both of them will darken. Some interpret צַר as the moon, whose light was diminished, צַר [meaning narrow,] and אוֹר as the sun, [meaning light]. in its eclipse Heb. בַּעֲרִיפֶיהָ. When its darkening comes. An expression similar to (Deut. 32:2): “Shall drip (יַעֲרֹף) like rain,” for so is the nature that when rain falls, the light darkens.”

“עליו Against him: against Israel. Like the roaring of the sea, etc.; behold darkness. For the light shall then be withheld from the earth. Comp. darkness of water (Ps. 18:12). And if he look unto the land, etc. For they will be on the land, not on the sea. And behold darkness. Darkness is here a figure for the distress of the heart. ונבט According to some it is Niphal, And it is looked; but I think it is Piel, And he looks, and its subject is Israel, the same to whom reference is made in the word עליו, as I have already stated. צר ואור According to some, Sun and moon; according to others, Moon and sun, because the moon is small (צַר) if compared with the sun; R. Adonim thinks that ה is omitted, צהר=צר light; for the letters א ה ו י are sometimes present in a word when they are superfluous, and at others omitted where they properly form part of the root; but he is mistaken, because ה does not belong to the vowel letters, and cannot be dropped except at the end of a word, where it replaces א. I take צר literally; it has here the same meaning as in Ps. 119:143, namely, distress, or—being an adjective—distressed. Palestine will be darkened by distress as well as by the sun, which will cast a gloom over her at the time of her destruction; for a mist will rise and hide the sun. בעריפיה In her destructions. Comp. יערף (Hos. 10:2) He will destroy; similar to it is וערפתו And break its neck (Exod. 13:13)”

“In all this the fury has not turned away. Here he sets down the common and final punishment, as regards the captivity by the Romans; and concerning this three things are set down. First, the preparation of the army; second, the disposition of the army, at the place, and behold he hastens; third, the infliction of the punishment, at the place, and he will hold the prey. Concerning the first, three things are set down. First, the indignation of the one gathering, in all this; as if to say: just as you add sins to sins, so he adds punishments to punishments. Below, 9: a man will not spare his brother, and he will turn to the right hand, and will be hungry; and he will eat on the left hand, and will not be satisfied. Second, the raising of the standard, and he will lift up a sign, that is, a standard. Jer. 4: raise up a sign in Sion, take courage, and do not stand still; for I bring evil from the north, and a great destruction. Third, the summoning of the army, and he will whistle, that is, he will inspire. Below, 7. And it will be in that day, the Lord will whistle for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assur; and they will come, and all will rest in the torrents of the valleys. And so that it may terrify the more, he sets down the foreignness of the nation, both as to worship, among the nations, so that they might not revere your holy things; and as to language, from afar, lest they be won over by words; and as to customs, from the ends of the earth, lest they be bound in league with them. Behold he hastens. Here the disposition of the army is set down: and first he shows them ready for coming; second, armed for fighting, his arrows; third, cruel for punishing, his roaring. Concerning the first, two things are set down. First, their swiftness: behold — for certainly — swift. Thren. 4: our persecutors were swifter than the eagles of heaven. Habac. 1: for his horsemen will come from afar; they will fly like an eagle hastening to eat. Jer. 4: behold, he will come up like a cloud, and his chariots like a tempest; his horses are swifter than eagles. Second, the cause of the swiftness according to the removal of a threefold impediment: the first, which could occur from weakness of nature; against which he says: and there is none feeble, who would have to remain behind, nor weary among them, who would have to come late. Below, 40: but they who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they will take up wings like eagles; they will run, and not grow weary; they will walk, and not faint. Second, against that which could arise from the will. He says: he will not slumber, through sloth, namely so that he would go sluggishly, nor will he sleep, so that he would not come to himself. Prov. 19: sloth casts one into sleep, and a dissolute soul will be hungry. Third, he removes the impediment arising from the necessity of things: nor will the girdle be loosed. And he sets down those things by which travelers are usually hindered from their journey: as if to say: all things will endure more than usual. Deut. 29: I led you forty years through the desert; your garments were not worn out, nor were the shoes of your feet consumed by age. His arrows are sharp. Here he shows them to be armed for fighting: and first as to the goodness of their weapons; and he sets down those things which in those lands are most customary. Sharp arrows, in which the goodness of the arrows is noted; bows bent, in which is the preparation of arms, lest they be hindered in preparing. Psal. 119: the sharp arrows of the mighty. Second, he sets down the conveyances: the hooves of his horses like flint, which is not broken easily, and his wheels like the rush of a tempest, making a great sound on account of their multitude and swiftness. Jer. 4: behold, he will come up like a cloud, and his chariots like a tempest. His roaring. Here he shows them to be cruel for punishing: and first as to fierceness, roaring. Oseae 11: they will walk after the Lord, he will roar like a lion; for he himself will roar, and the sons of the sea will be afraid. Second, as to rapacity: he will roar like the whelps of lions. Ps. 103: the whelps of lions roaring that they may seize. Third, as to cruelty, and he will gnash, which belongs to the boar. Ps. 34: they have gnashed upon me with their teeth. Ps. 79: the boar out of the wood has laid them waste, and a lone wild beast has devoured it. And he will hold. Here the infliction of the punishment is set down, and finally the despair of those punished, at the place, we will look. Concerning the first he sets down three things. First he threatens the seizure: he will hold the prey; as if to say: he will seize you like prey. Nahum 2: the lion has taken enough for his whelps, and has killed for his lionesses, and has filled his dens with prey, and his lair with spoil. Second, the anxious detention: and he will hold fast, lest you go out through their carelessness; and there will be none to deliver, through their powerlessness. Threnorum 1: the Lord has given me into a hand, from which I will not be able to rise. Third, the rigid domination, and he will make a sound, with threats and terrors. Jer. 6: behold, a people will come from the land of the north, and a great nation will rise up from the ends of the earth; it will seize the arrow and the shield; it is cruel, and will not have mercy; its voice will sound like the sea. We will look toward the land. Here he sets down their despair: and first as to help from the earth: we will look toward the land, on every side, and behold darkness, because all were pursuing them; second, as to help from heaven: and the light, of the divine hope, has been darkened in its gloom. Jer. 4: I looked upon the earth, and behold it was empty and nothing; and the heavens, and there was no light in them. And the prophet numbers himself among them through compassion.”

“And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea,.... That is, the Romans against the Jews; whose attacks upon them should be with so much fierceness and power, that it should be like the roaring of the sea, which is very dreadful, and threatens with utter destruction; the roaring of the sea and its waves is mentioned among the signs preceding Jerusalem's destruction by the Romans, Luk 21:25, and if one look unto the land: the land of Judea, when wasted by the Romans, or while those wars continued between them and the Jews; or "into it" (k). behold darkness; great affliction and tribulation being signified by darkness and dimness; see Isa 8:21. and sorrow or "distress", great straits and calamities: and, or "even", the light is darkened in the heavens thereof; in their civil and church state, the kingdom being removed from the one, and the priesthood from the other; and their principal men in both, signified by the darkness of the sun, moon, and stars. Mat 24:29. (k) "in terram", Montanus, Piscator; "in hanc terram", Junius & Tremellius. Next: Isaiah Chapter 6”

“Mist. Denoting calamity. Hebrew, “ruin.” Septuagint, “indigence.” (Calmet) Bible Text & Cross-references: The reprobation of the Jews is foreshewn under the parable of a vineyard. A woe is pronounced against sinners: the army God shall send against them. 1 I will *sing to my beloved the canticle of my cousin concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a hill in a fruitful place. 2 And he fenced it in, and picked the stones out of it, and planted it with the choicest vines, and built a tower in the midst thereof, and set up a wine-press therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. 3 And now, O ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and ye men of Juda, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What is there that I ought to do more to my vineyard, that I have not done to it? was it that I looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it hath brought forth wild grapes? 5 And now I will shew you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be wasted: I will break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. 6 And I will make it desolate: it shall not be pruned, and it shall not be digged: but briers and thorns shall come up: and I will command the clouds to rain no rain upon it.”

“sorrow, and the light is darkened--Otherwise, distress and light (that is, hope and fear) alternately succeed (as usually occurs in an unsettled state of things), and darkness arises in, &c. [MAURER]. heavens--literally, "clouds," that is, its sky is rather "clouds" than sky. Otherwise from a different Hebrew root, "in its destruction" or ruins. HORSLEY takes "sea . . . look unto the land" as a new image taken from mariners in a coasting vessel (such as all ancient vessels were), looking for the nearest land, which the darkness of the storm conceals, so that darkness and distress alone may be said to be visible. Isaiah is outside, near the altar in front of the temple. The doors are supposed to open, and the veil hiding the Holy of Holies to be withdrawn, unfolding to his view a vision of God represented as an Eastern monarch, attended by seraphim as His ministers of state (Kg1 22:19), and with a robe and flowing train (a badge of dignity in the East), which filled the temple. This assertion that he had seen God was, according to tradition (not sanctioned by Isa 1:1; see Introduction), the pretext for sawing him asunder in Manasseh's reign (Heb 11:37). Visions often occur in the other prophets: in Isaiah there is only this one, and it is marked by characteristic clearness and simplicity. Next: Isaiah Chapter 6”

“"And it utters a deep roar over it in that day like the roaring of the sea: and it looks to the earth, and behold darkness, tribulation, and light; it becomes night over it in the clouds of heaven." The subject to "roars" is the mass of the enemy; and in the expressions "over it" and "it looks" (nibbat; the niphal, which is only met with here, in the place of the hiphil) the prophet has in his mind the nation of Judah, upon which the enemy falls with the roar of the ocean - that is to say, overwhelming it like a sea. And when the people of Judah look to the earth, i.e., to their own land, darkness alone presents itself, and darkness which has swallowed up all the smiling and joyous aspect which it had before. And what then? The following words, tzar vâ'ōr, have been variously rendered, viz., "moon (= sahar) and sun" by the Jewish expositors, "stone and flash," i.e., hail and thunder-storm, by Drechsler; but such renderings as these, and others of a similar kind, are too far removed from the ordinary usage of the language. And the separation of the two words, so that the one closes a sentence and the other commences a fresh one (e.g., "darkness of tribulation, and the sun becomes dark"), which is adopted by Hitzig, Gesenius, Ewald, and others, is opposed to the impression made by the two monosyllables, and sustained by the pointing, that they are connected together. The simplest explanation is one which takes the word tzar in its ordinary sense of tribulation or oppression, and 'ōr in its ordinary sense of light, and which connects the two words closely together. And this is the case with the rendering given above: tzar vâ'ōr are "tribulation and brightening up," one following the other and passing over into the other, like morning and night (Isa 21:12). This pair of words forms an interjectional clause, the meaning of which is, that when the predicted darkness had settled upon the land of Judah, this would not be the end; but there would still follow an alternation of anxiety and glimmerings of hope, until at last it had become altogether dark in the cloudy sky over all the land of Judah (‛ariphim, the cloudy sky, is only met with here; it is derived from âraph, to drop or trickle, hence also arâphel: the suffix points back to lâ'âretz, eretz denoting sometimes the earth as a whole, and at other times the land as being part of the earth). The prophet here predicts that, before utter ruin has overtaken Judah, sundry approaches will be made towards this, within which a divine deliverance will appear again and again. Grace tries and tries again and again, until at last the measure of iniquity is full, and the time of repentance past. The history of the nation of Judah proceeded according to this law until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The Assyrian troubles, and the miraculous light of divine help which arose in the destruction of the military power of Sennacherib, were only the foreground of this mournful but yet ever and anon hopeful course of history, which terminated in utter darkness, that has continued now for nearly two thousand years. This closes the third prophetic address. It commences with a parable which contains the history of Israel in nuce, and closes with an emblem which symbolizes the gradual but yet certain accomplishment of the judicial, penal termination of the parable. This third address, therefore, is as complete in itself as the second was. The kindred allusions are to be accounted for from the sameness of the historical basis and arena. During the course of the exposition, it has become more and more evident and certain that it relates to the time of Uzziah and Jotham - a time of peace, of strength, and wealth, but also of pride and luxury. The terrible slaughter of the Syro-Ephraimitish war, which broke out at the end of Jotham's reign, and the varied complications which king Ahaz introduced between Judah and the imperial worldly power, and which issued eventually in the destruction of the former kingdom - those five marked epochs in the history of the kingdoms of the world, or great empires, to which the Syro-Ephraimitish war was the prelude - were still hidden from the prophet in the womb of the future. The description of the great mass of people that was about to roll over Judah from afar is couched in such general terms, so undefined and misty, that all we can say is, that everything that was to happen to the people of God on the part of the imperial power during the five great and extended periods of judgment that were now so soon to commence (viz., the Assyrian, the Chaldean, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman), was here unfolding itself out of the mist of futurity, and presenting itself to the prophet's eye. Even in the time of Ahaz the character of the prophecy changed in this respect. It was then that the eventful relation, in which Israel stood to the imperial power, generally assumed its first concrete shape in the form of a distinct relation to Asshur (Assyria). And from that time forth the imperial power in the mouth of the prophet is no longer a majestic thing without a name; but although the notion of the imperial power was not yet embodied in Asshur, it was called Asshur, and Asshur stood as its representative. It also necessarily follows from this, that Chapters 2-4 and 5 belong to the times anterior to Ahaz, i.e., to those of Uzziah and Jotham. But several different questions suggest themselves here. If chapters 2-4 and 5 were uttered under Uzziah and Jotham, how could Isaiah begin with a promise (Isa 2:1-4) which is repeated word for word in Mic 4:1., where it is the direct antithesis to Isa 3:12, which was uttered by Micah, according to Jer 26:18, in the time of Hezekiah? Again, if we consider the advance apparent in the predictions of judgment from the general expressions with which they commence in Chapter 1 to the close of chapter 5, in what relation does the address in chapter 1 stand to chapters 2-4 and 5, inasmuch as Isa 5:7-9 are not ideal (as we felt obliged to maintain, in opposition to Caspari), but have a distinct historical reference, and therefore at any rate presuppose the Syro-Ephraimitish war? And lastly, if Isa 6:1-13 does really relate, as it apparently does, to the call of Isaiah to the prophetic office, how are we to explain the singular fact, that three prophetic addresses precede the history of his call, which ought properly to stand at the commencement of the book? Drechsler and Caspari have answered this question lately, by maintaining that Isa 6:1-13 does not contain an account of the call of Isaiah to the prophetic office, but simply of the call of the prophet, who was already installed in that office, to one particular mission. The proper heading to be adopted for Isa 6:1-13 would therefore be, "The ordination of the prophet as the preacher of the judgment of hardening;" and chapters 1-5 would contain warning reproofs addressed by the prophet to the people, who were fast ripening for this judgment of hardening (reprobation), for the purpose of calling them to repentance. The final decision was still trembling in the balance. But the call to repentance was fruitless, and Israel hardened itself. And now that the goodness of God had tried in vain to lead the people to repentance, and the long-suffering of God had been wantonly abused by the people, Jehovah Himself would harden them. Looked at in this light, Isa 6:1-13 stands in its true historical place. It contains the divine sequel to that portion of Isaiah's preaching, and of the prophetic preaching generally, by which it had been preceded. But true as it is that the whole of the central portion of Israel's history, which lay midway between the commencement and the close, was divided in half by the contents of Isa 6:1-13, and that the distinctive importance of Isaiah as a prophet arose especially from the fact that he stood upon the boundary between these two historic halves; there are serious objections which present themselves to such an explanation of Isa 6:1-13. It is possible, indeed, that this distinctive importance may have been given to Isaiah's official position at his very first call. And what Umbreit says - namely, that Isa 6:1-13 must make the impression upon every unprejudiced mind, that it relates to the prophet's inaugural vision - cannot really be denied. but the position in which Isa 6:1-13 stands in the book itself must necessarily produce a contrary impression, unless it can be accounted for in some other way. Nevertheless the impression still remains (just as at Isa 1:7-9), and recurs again and again. We will therefore proceed to Isa 6:1-13 without attempting to efface it. It is possible that we may discover some other satisfactory explanation of the enigmatical position of Isa 6:1-13 in relation to what precedes.”