If the Reader will compare this chapter in the several parts of it, with Leviticus 26:1, he will find a solemn explanation given of what is here said, and mark the progression of divine visitations in both. Everything manifests, that when the Lord smites, it is to reform: and when the calamities the Lord sends, (as here marked), are brought to the highest pitch when men, like an army besieged and without provision, are reduced to the extremity of eating the flesh of their own arm: if these awful visitations be unaccompanied with grace; depend upon it, if the Lord cease to correct, judgments are at hand. Hence the Prophet again repeats, as the running lamentation of each distressing view of the subject, "These are the sad causes of the Lord's just anger, " For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts!
Related Commentaries of Isaiah 9:18
Isaiah 9:18-21
18 For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.
19 Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuele of the fire: no man shall spare his brother.
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.