Isaiah 1:30 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For ye shall be as an oak, &c. As you have sinned under the oaks and in the gardens, so you shall be like unto oaks and gardens, not when they are green and flourishing, but when they wither and decay. This verse is remarkably elegant, in which, what was the pleasure and confidence of those idolaters, is made to denote their punishment. “All the gardens in the East,” says a late writer, “have water in them, which is so absolutely necessary, that without it every thing, in summer, would be parched up. This is a circumstance which we should attend to, if we would enter into the energy of the latter clause.”