III.
(1) For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem... — From the general picture of the state of Judah as a whole, of the storm of Divine wrath bursting over the whole land, Isaiah turns to the Holy City itself, and draws the picture of what he saw there of evil, of that which would be seen before long as the punishment of the evil.
The stay and the staff... — In the existing Hebrew text the words receive an immediate interpretation, as meaning the two chief supports of life — bread and water. So we have the “staff of bread” in Leviticus 26:26; Psalms 105:16; Ezekiel 4:16; Ezekiel 5:16. Possibly, however, the interpretation is of the nature of a marginal gloss, which has found its way into the text, and “the stay and staff” (in the Hebrew the latter word is the feminine form of the former) are really identified with the “pillars of the state,” the great women as well as the great men who are named afterwards. On the other hand, Isaiah 3:7 implies the pressure of famine, and the prophet may have intended to paint the complete failure of all resources, both material and political.