Isaiah 47:14 - Exposition

Behold, they shall be as stubble (comp. Isaiah 5:24 ; Isaiah 40:24 ; Isaiah 41:2 ). A favourite metaphor with Isaiah for extreme weakness and incapacity of resistance. In Isaiah 5:24 it is connected, as here, with fire. No doubt in Palestine, as elsewhere, an accidental fire from time to time caught hold of a stubble-field, and speedily reduced it to a mass of blackened ashes. The threat here is that God's wrath shall similarly sweep over Babylon. They shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame. Mr. Cheyne translates, with much spirit, "They cannot rescue their soul from the clutch of the flame." Like those who are caught in the midst of a fire in a prairie or jungle, they have no escape—the flame is on all sides—and they cannot but perish. There shall not be a coal to warm at; rather, it is not a charcoal-fire to warm one ' s self at. A return to the sarcastic tone of Isaiah 5:12 , Isaiah 5:13 . The conflagration which spreads around is something more than a fire to warm one's self at—it is an awful widespread devastation.