Isaiah 10:33 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 10:33
Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop the bough with terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled.
to depress or sink (expectation figuratively · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Amos 2:9 Yet destroyed I the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his…
Isaiah 37:38 And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword;…
Daniel 4:37 Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk i…
2 Kings 19:21-37 This is the word that the LORD hath spoken concerning him; The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; th…
2 Chronicles 32:21 And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So…
Job 40:11-12 Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Isaiah 2:11-17 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
Isaiah 10:16-19 Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burnin…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 10:24–end
The prophet, in his preaching, distinguishes between the precious and the vile; for God in his providence, even in the same providence, does so. He speaks terror, in Sennacherib's invasion, to the hypocrites, who were the people of God's wrath, Isa 10:6. But here he speaks comfort to the sincere, who were the people of God's love. The judgment was sent for the sake of the former; the deliverance was wrought for the sake of the latter. Here we have,
I. An exhortation to God's people not to be frightened at this threatening calamity, nor to be put into any confusion or consternation by it. Let the sinners in Zion be afraid (Isa 33:14): but O my people, that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of t…
bough--literally, the "beauty" of the tree; "the beautiful branch."
high ones of stature--"the upright stem," as distinguished from the previous "boughs" [HORSLEY].
John Gill on Isaiah 10:33
Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall lop the bough with terror,.... Cut off the king of Assyria and his army, in a most terrible manner; "the glory" of it, as in Isaiah 10:18 the word signifies that which is the ornament, the beauty and glory, of the tree. The Septuagint render it, "the glorious ones"; and the Arabic version, "the nobles", the generals, and principal officers of the army; the Targum is,
"behold, the Lord of the world, the Lord of hosts, shall cast forth the slain in his camp, as grapes that are trod in a winepress.''
And the high ones of stature shall be hewn down; the princes of Assyria, so boasted of as kings, Isaiah 10:8 comparable to tall trees, to oaks and cedar…
Yet a day. [178] Some interpret this, that the Assyrian will yet remain one day in Nob, which was a village contiguous to Jerusalem, as Jerome and others declare. But I rather agree with those who think that it means, that he will have a great part of the day before him when he halts there, in order to make preparations for besieging Jerusalem on the following day. He intends to describe the rapid march of the Assyrian, and how near Jerusalem was to utter destruction; as if he had said, that he had but a small part of the journey to perform, and that before the day was ended, he would arrive at that city.
He shall shake the hand. This contributes still more to show their terror; for Sennach…
The Church Fathers
And who are these but the rich? Because they have indeed received their consolation, glory and honor, and a lofty position from their wealth.
Behold the Lord of hosts will break the jar in terror, and the lofty stature will be cut down, and the exalted will be brought low, and the dense forests will be destroyed by the sword, and Lebanon with its heights will fall. Some people think that this passage is still speaking of the Assyrians, and that when they are crushed, all the nations around them that were subject to their rule will be cut down and humbled, and the dense forests will be destroyed. They understand this metaphorically as referring to the people and rulers. Moreover, even Lebanon with its lofty cedars can fall, so that no power of Assyria remains at all. But others want this place to be about Christ, especially since what follows, and we ourselves, and the Circumcision Scriptures, testify about him. Above, it was mentioned that the name of the child to be born of a Virgin would be called Emmanuel; and later the prophetess in her conception in the womb would proclaim, 'Hurry, plunder, hasten to prey' (Isa. 8:3), and he himself would be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to the two houses of Israel; his dominion would be on his shoulder, and he would be called by six names: Wonderful, Counselor, God, Strong, Father of the future age, and Prince of peace; and his empire would multiply, and there would be no end to peace. Now in the prologue of his coming, before it is said that he will be born of the descendants of Jesse and David, the passion of him is demonstrated through the symbol of the broken vessel: that, by the will of God, his flesh was handed over to death so that the pride of the Jews may be destroyed and those who were once lofty may fall to the ground; and Lebanon with its cedars may be cut down, of which we read in Zachariah: Open your gates, O Lebanon, and let fire devour your cedars; wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen, because the noble have been devastated (Zach. XI, 1, 2). But that he is said to be contrite and struck by the Father, and that is indicated by this: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered (Zech. XIII, 7). And another testimony: For they have persecuted him whom you have struck (Ps. LXVIII, 2). The Hebrew word פורע (Phura), which Aquila has interpreted as κεραμεῖον, and Theodotion and Symmachus translated as ληνὸν, that is, winepress, which also signifies the Lord's Passion according to the inscription of three psalms,…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Aesthetically considered, the description is one of the most magnificent that human poetry has ever produced. "He comes upon Ayyath, passes through Migron; in Michmash he leaves his baggage. They go through the pass: let Geba be our quarters for the night! Ramah trembles; Gibeah of Saul flees. Scream aloud, O daughter of Gallim! Only listen, O Laysha! Poor Anathoth! Madmenah hurries away; the inhabitants of Gebim rescue. He still halts in Nob today; swings his hand over the mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. Behold, the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, lops down the branches with terrific force; and those of towering growth are hewn down, and the lofty are humbled. And He fells…
Look, the Assyrians are now at Aiath: The march described in 10:29-32 is a poetic account of Assyria’s defeat. The places follow a route from the north down to Jerusalem. Upon arriving at Jerusalem, the Assyrians were forced to retreat. God was with Jerusalem, and eventually Assyria would be utterly destroyed. This passage might foretell Sennacherib’s invasion in 701 BC (see chs 36–37), but it could just as well describe an earlier or later invasion.
Rashi on Isaiah 10:33
Behold the Master on that night.
lops off the branches with a saw Shall lop off its branches, the root of the branches of his trees. ([Mss. read:] Uproots the branches of his trees.) ([Other mss. read:] Cuts off the branches of his trees.)
with a saw Heb. בְּמַעֲרָצָה, with a saw that cuts the boughs. This [word פֻּארָה] is not an expression denoting a winepress, for it is not spelled with a ‘vav,’ like (infra 63: 3) “A winepress (פּוּרָה) I trod,” and like (Haggai 2:16) “To draw off fifty measures from the winepress (פּוּרָה),” but with an ‘aleph,’ like (Ezekiel 31:5) “And its boughs became long (פֹּארֹתָיו).” מְסָעֵף is an expression of cutting off branches [esbranchier in O.F.], like (i…