Therefore the Lord shall have no Joy in their young men
“The Lord shall have no joy in their young men”
The meaning is full of suggestion God delights in the young.
God has made the young a ministry of instruction and comfort to old age. God keeps the world young by keeping children in it, and helpless ones. But God shall cease to see in young men any hope for the future. Henceforth God withdraws from the young, and they become old; He takes from them His all-vitalising and all-blessing smile, and they wither as flowers die when the sun turns away. (J. Parker, D. D.)
General corruption followed by general desolation
The desolation should be as general as the corruption has been, and none should escape it.
1. Not those that were the objects of complacency; none shall be spared for love. “The Lord shall have no joy in their young men.” etc.
2. Not those that were the objects of compassion; none shall be spared for pity. He shall not “have mercy on their fatherless and widows.” They had corrupted their way like the rest; and if the poverty and helplessness of their state was not an argument with them to keep them from sin, they could not expect it should be an argument with God to protect them from judgments (M. Henry.)
