Matthew Poole Commentary - Isaiah 59:5 - 59:5

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Matthew Poole Commentary - Isaiah 59:5 - 59:5


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They hatch cockatrice eggs; or adder, or basilisk; one kind put for any venomous creature; a proverbial speech, signifying by these eggs mischievous designs, and by hatching them their putting them in practice: this is to show that mischief is natural to them, and they can do no otherwise, poison is natural to these eggs.



Weave the spider’s web; another proverbial speech, whereby is taught, both how by their plots they weave nets, lay snares industriously, with great pains and artifice, whereby they may entangle and involve their poor neighbours in intricacies and perplexities, and so devour them, as the spider weaves her web to catch flies, and then to feed on them; and also how that they contrive nothing but what will tend to their own ruin, as the issue of the viper is the death of the mother, and they and their designs will come to nothing, and not answer their end, as the spider’s web is soon swept away, and is seen no more, which doth well agree with what follows.



He that eateth of their eggs dieth: here is a catachrestical allusion, noting that he who hath commerce with them, and approves their counsels, which are the eggs which they hatch, will be poisoned with them.



And that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper: if and be copulative here, then the sense is either, If any seek to crush and disappoint their plots, or if they be sprinkled or dispersed abroad, (as the margin seems to favour,) they will seek his ruin, will be as a viper to him. But if and be causal, as it often is, and may be here, then the sense is, q.d. He dieth, because the eggs being crushed, a poisonous viper proceeds from it; the more you partake of their counsels, the more you are infected, there lies such a dreadful poison embodied in them.