Isaiah 8:21,22 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And they The idolatrous and apostate Israelites; shall pass through it Namely, their own land, into captivity; or, as עבר בה may be rendered, shall pass to and fro, or wander hither and thither, in it, like distracted men, not knowing whither to go, or what to do; whereas, if they had not forsaken God, they might have had a quiet and settled abode in it. Hardly bestead and hung r y Hebrew, נקשׁה ורעב, distressed and famished, as Bishop Lowth translates the words: they shall fret themselves, &c. Shall be impatient under their pressures, and, in the rage of their despair, curse their king To whose ill conduct they impute a great part of their miseries; and their God Their idol, to whom they trusted, and whom now, too late, they find to be unable to help them; and look upward To heaven for help, as men of all nations and religions, in great calamities, are wont to do. And they shall look unto the earth Finding no help from heaven, they turn their eyes downward, looking hither and thither for comfort; and behold trouble and darkness, &c. Many words, expressing the same thing, are put together, to signify the variety, and extremity, and continuance of their miseries. Bishop Lowth, who connects with this verse the last clause of the twenty-first, renders the passage thus: “He shall cast his eyes upward, and look down to the earth; and lo! distress and darkness! gloom, tribulation, and accumulated darkness!”