Isaiah 9:13-15 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For the people turneth not, &c. We have here the second crime of this refractory people, who, impenitent and stupid, regarded not the chastisement of the Lord, nor turned to him at his reproof. Therefore a total subversion of their state and polity is denounced as the severest punishment upon them. The Lord will cut off, &c., head and tail High and low, honourable and contemptible, as the next verse explains it; branch and rush The goodly branches of tall trees, the mighty and noble; and the bulrush, the weakest and meanest persons. In one day All together, one as well as another, without any distinction. The ancient, &c., he is the head That is, is signified by the word head, in the former verse; and the prophet that teacheth lies, &c. Whose destruction he mentions, not as if it were a punishment to them to be deprived of such persons, but partly to show the extent of the calamity, that it should reach to all sorts of persons; and partly to beat down their vain presumptions of peace and prosperity, by showing that those false prophets, which had fed their vain hopes, should perish, and their false prophecies with them. He is the tail The basest part of the whole people.