Speak, Thus saith the Lord. — The abrupt opening indicates a new prediction, coming to him unbidden, which he is constrained to utter as a message from Jehovah.
As the handful. — The reaper gathered into swathes, or small sheaves, what he could hold in his left hand, as he went on cutting with his sickle. These he threw down as they became too big to hold, and they were left strewn on the field till he returned to gather them up into larger sheaves. So should the bodies of the dead be strewn, the prophet says, on the open field, but there should be none to take them up and bury them.