31 The strong will be like tinder, and his work like a spark. They will both burn together, and no one will quench them."
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
And your God [1] shall be as tow The Hebrew word chsn (chason) signifies strong: and though it is here applied to God, still it retains its signification, as if he had said, "That god who was your strength shall be turned into stubble." And the maker of it By the maker he means the carver; but as he mentions an idol, we must explain it agreeably to the matter in hand. Some think that he expresses the repentance of idolaters, by telling us that they would acknowledge their folly, and, being covered with shame, would burn their idols. But I consider the meaning to be different; for as a fire is made of dry fuel such as tow, "in like manner," saith the Prophet," gather you and your idols into one heap, as when a pile of wood is built up, that you may be consumed together, so that the idols may be like tow, and the men like fire, and that one conflagration may consume the whole." And there shall be none to quench them It ought to be observed that the Prophets, when they mention the wrath of God, describe it by outward representations, because it cannot be perceived by the eyes or by any other sense. Thus the wrath of God, by which the ungodly are destroyed, is compared to fire, which consumes all things. It is now evident enough what the Prophet means, namely, that all the ungodly shall be destroyed, whatever may be the nature of their confidence; and not only so, but that their destruction shall be the greater, because they have placed their confidence in false and deceitful things, and that utter destruction will overtake them from that very quarter from which they had vainly looked for deliverance. For the images and idols are excitements of the wrath of God, kindling it into a flame which cannot be quenched.
1 - And the strong. -- Eng. Ver.
And the strong - Those who have been thought to be strong, on whom the people relied for protection and defense - their rulers, princes, and the commanders of their armies.
As tow - The coarse or broken part of flax, or hemp. It means here that which shall be easily and quickly kindled and rapidly consumed. As tow burns and is destroyed at the touch of fire, so shall the rulers of the people be consumed by the approaching calamities.
And the maker of it - This is an unhappy translation. The word פעלו po‛ălô may be indeed a participle, and be rendered 'its maker,' but it is more commonly a noun, and means his work, or his action. This is its plain meaning here. So the Latin Vulgate, the Septuagint, and the Chaldee. It means, that as a spark enkindles tow, so the works or deeds of a wicked nation shall be the occasion or cause of their destruction. The ambition of one man is the cause of his ruin; the sensuality of a second is the cause of his; the avarice of a third is the cause of his. These passions, insatiable and ungratified, shall be the occasion of the deep and eternal sorrows of hell. So it means here, that the crimes and hypocrisy of the nation would be the real cause of all the calamities that would come upon them as a people.
Shall both burn together - The spark and the flame from the kindled flax mingle, and make one fire. So the people and their works would be enkindled and destroyed together. They would burn so rapidly, that nothing could extinguish them. The meaning is, that the nation would be punished; and that all their works of idolatry and monuments of sin would be the occasion of their punishment, and would perish at the same time. The "principle" involved in this passage teaches us the following things:
(1) That the wicked, however mighty, shall be destroyed.
(2) That their works will be the "cause" of their ruin - a cause necessarily leading to it.
(3) That the works of the wicked - all that they do and all on which they depend - shall be destroyed.
(4) That this destruction shall be final. Nothing shall stay the flame. No tears of penitence, no power of men or devils, shall "put out" the fires which the works of the wicked shall enkindle.
And the strong shall be as a (p) wick, and its maker as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench [them].
(p) The false god's in which you put your confidence will be consumed as easily as a piece of wick.
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, Daniel 7:20 the beast who had great power and authority given by the dragon, Revelation 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, Daniel 7:11, Revelation 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, 2-Thessalonians 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, Revelation 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, Matthew 25:41. The Chaldee paraphrase is,
"so the wicked shall be consumed, and their evil works, and there shall be no mercy upon them.''
strong--powerful rulers (Amos 2:9).
maker of it--rather, his work. He shall be at once the fuel, "tow," and the cause of the fire, by kindling the first "spark."
both--the wicked ruler, and "his work," which "is as a spark."
Isaiah 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., Isaiah 52:14 and Jeremiah 22:13) are two equally admissible changes of the ground-form פעלו (פּעלו). As Isaiah 1:29 refers to idolatrous worship, poalo (his work) is an idol, a god made by human hands (cf., Isaiah 2:8; Isaiah 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 Isaiah 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 Isaiah 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 Isaiah 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 Isaiah 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.
The strong - Your idols, which you think to be strong and able to defend you. As tow - Shall be as suddenly and easily, consumed by my judgments, as tow is by fire. The maker - Of the idol, who can neither save himself nor his workmanship.
*More commentary available at chapter level.