Isaiah 26:11 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

When thy hand is lifted up, they will not see; and they are guilty of the same obstinate blindness when thou dost smite and punish them, which is commonly signified by lifting up the hand, as Ezekiel 44:12 Micah 5:9. Compare also 2 Samuel 20:21 1 Kings 11:26. Or, as others render it, when thine hand is high or exalted, i.e. when thy works are most evident and most glorious, when thou appearest most gloriously for the defence of thy people, and for the punishment of thine and their enemies, they will not see. They shall see: the same word is repeated in another sense. They shall feel and know that by sad and costly experience, which they would not learn by other and easier ways. Seeing is oft put for feeling; in which sense men are said to see affliction, Lamentations 3:1, and to see death, Psalms 89:48, and the like. At the people; or, at or towards thy people, the pronoun thy being repeated out of the following clause, as it is in many other places of Scripture, as hath been before noted. Their envy and hatred against God's people blinded their minds, that they neither could nor would see that God was on their side, though the tokens of it were most manifest and undeniable; which was the case of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, who were not sensible that the Lord fought for Israel against the Egyptians, as they said, Exodus 14:25, till it was too late. The fire of thine enemies; not efficiently, but objectively; such fire or wrath as thou usest to pour forth upon thine implacable enemies. As my wrong, Genesis 16:5, is not the wrong done by me, but to me; and my violence, Jeremiah 2:35, is the violence done to me, as we translate it, not by me.