Isaiah 28:2 - Exposition

The Lord hath a mighty and strong one . God has in reserve a mighty power, which he will let loose upon Samaria. The wicked are "his sword" ( Psalms 17:13 ), and are employed to carry out his sentences. In the present ease the "mighty and strong one" is the Assyrian power. As a tempest of hail, etc. The fearfully devastating force of an Assyrian invasion is set forth under three distinct images—a hailstorm, a furious tempest of wind, and a violent inundation—as though so only could its full horror be depicted. War is always a horrible scourge; but in ancient times, and with a people so cruel as the Assyrians, it was a calamity exceeding in terribleness the utmost that the modern reader can conceive. It involved the wholesale burning of cities and villages, the wanton destruction of trees and crops, the slaughter of thousands in battles and sieges, the subsequent massacre of hundreds in cold blood, the plunder of all classes, and the deportation of tens of thousands of captives, who were carried into hopeless servitude in a strange land. With the hand ; i.e. "with force," "violently." So in Assyrian constantly (compare the use of the Greek χερί ).