This Portion of the chapter opens in a very solemn manner. Whether the prophet means the visitations of God in the day of calamity of this world; or refers to the day of judgment for another; in both cases it is solemn. See Revelation 6:12-17. But is there not a spiritual sense of the passage, alluding to the day, when God by his Holy Spirit, awakens conviction in the heart? Never surely doth the soul lie lower in the dust before God, than when a sense of sin, and the fear of the wrath to come, first breaks in from the Spirit's awakening in the soul. Then pleasant pictures and high mountains, both the cedars of Lebanon, and the oaks of Bashan, are as nothing: the sinner wants to flee if possible from himself; and nothing can comfort the soul under the apprehension of God's wrath against sin, until Christ is revealed in all the suitableness of the Saviour, and formed in the heart the hope of glory.
Isaiah 2:10-21
10 Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty.
11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low:
13 And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,
14 And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up,
15 And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall,
16 And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasantc pictures.
17 And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
18 And the idols he shall utterly abolish.
19 And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth,d for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
20 In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats;
21 To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.