Isaiah 9:20,21 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

He shall snatch on the right hand They shall plunder and devour one another, without ever being satisfied, or ceasing. They shall eat every man the flesh, &c. They shall destroy one another by their intestine wars: see Isaiah 49:26. But it was literally fulfilled when they were reduced to that extremity that they ate the flesh of their own children, 2 Kings 6:28; Jeremiah 19:8-9; a judgment denounced for their sins by Moses, Deuteronomy 28:53, where see the note. They together shall fall on Judah When those tribes have preyed upon and nearly destroyed one another, they shall turn their rage on Judah. The prophet in the above verses describes the infatuation of the Israelites and Jews, who, instead of uniting in a confederacy against their common enemies, the Syrians and Assyrians, with whom they were not singly able to contend, fell out among themselves, and so far destroyed each other, that they became, one after the other, an easy prey to those heathen nations, whom, humanly speaking, they would have been able to have repelled, had they united in a league, and aided each other. But God suffered them to be infatuated, as a punishment of their sins.

Isaiah 9:20-21

20 And he shall snatchf on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm:

21 Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.