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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comAdam Clarke Commentary - Isaiah 24:17 - 24:17
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Fear, and the pit “The terror, the pit” - If they escape one calamity, another shall overtake them.
“As if a man should flee from a lion, and a bear should overtake him:
Or should betake himself to his house, and lean his hand on the wall,
And a serpent should bite him.”
Amo 5:19.
“For,” as our Savior expressed it in a like parabolical manner, “wheresoever the carcass is there shall the eagles be gathered together,” Mat 24:28. The images are taken from the different methods of hunting and taking wild beasts, which were anciently in use. The terror was a line strung with feathers of all colors which fluttering in the air scared and frightened the beasts into the toils, or into the pit which was prepared for them. Nec est mirum, cum maximos ferarum greges linea pennis distincta contineat, et in insidias agat, ab ipso effectu dicta formido. Seneca de Ira, 2:12. The pit or pitfall, fovea; digged deep in the ground, and covered over with green boughs, turf, etc., in order to deceive them, that they might fall into it unawares. The snare, or toils, indago; a series of nets, inclosing at first a great space of ground, in which the wild beasts were known to be; and then drawn in by degrees into a narrower compass, till they were at last closely shut up, and entangled in them. - L.
For מכול mikkol, a MS. reads מפני mippeney, as it is in Jer 48:44, and so the Vulgate and Chaldee. But perhaps it is only, like the latter, a Hebraism, and means no more than the simple preposition מ mem. See Psa 102:6. For it does not appear that the terror was intended to scare the wild beasts by its noise. The paronomasia is very remarkable; פחד pachad, פחת pachath, פך pach: and that it was a common proverbial form, appears from Jeremiah’s repeating it in the same words, Jer 48:43, Jer 48:44.