Isaiah 2:22 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Cease ye from man “The prophet here subjoins an admonitory exhortation to the men of his own and of all times, to dissuade them from placing any confidence in man, however excellent in dignity, or great in power; as his life depends upon the air which he breathes through his nostrils, and which, if it be stopped, he is no more; and therefore, if you abstract from him the providence and grace of God, and consider him as left to himself, he is worthy of very little confidence and regard: see Psalms 146:3-4. Vitringa is of opinion, that the prophet here alludes immediately to the kings of Egypt: see Isaiah 31:3. And he adds, that the mystical interpretation of the period from the twelfth to this verse, may refer also to other days of the divine judgment, of which there are four peculiarly noted in Scripture, as referring to the new economy. 1st, The day of the subversion of the Jewish republic; 2d, The day of vengeance on the governors of the Roman empire, the persecutors of the church, in the time of Constantine; 3d, The future day of judgment hereafter to take place upon Antichrist and his crew; of which the prophets, and St. John in the Revelation particularly, have spoken; and, 4th, The day of general judgment. It is to this third day that he thinks the present period more immediately refers: see 2 Thessalonians 2:2; Revelation 16:14.” Dodd.