For her wound [is] incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he is come unto the gate of my people, [even] to Jerusalem.
Ver. 9. For her wound is incurable] Or, she is grievously sick of her wounds; or, her wounds are full of anguish, neither is there any to pour in balm of Gilead, to allay it; any to lick it whole, as the Lady Elinor did her husband Prince Edward's wound, traitorously given him in the Holy Land, by an assassin, with a poisoned knife.
For it is come unto Judah] viz. Samaria's wound and plague is come, i.e. shall shortly come, though now they live as if out of the reach of God's rod, or as if they had a protection.
He is come unto the gate of my people] Sennacherib (flushed with former successes at Samaria, which had been carried captive by his father) came up to the very gate of Jerusalem as an overflowing scourge; and thought to have cut off all the Jews at once, as if they had had all but one neck. He came up over all his channels, and went over all his banks. He passed through Judah, and overflowed, reaching even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings filled the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel, Isaiah 8:8. But Immanuel soon took a course with him, Isaiah 37:33, so that though he came to the gates, yet he entered not into the city, nor shot an arrow there, nor cast a bank against it. "Look upon Zion," saith that prophet, "the city of our solemnities," and see if Jerusalem be not still "a quiet habitation," Isaiah 33:20. "Walk about Zion," saith the psalmist, "and go round about her: tell the towers thereof." See if any be missing since Sennacherib came up against them. "Mark ye well her bulwarks": are they diminished? "consider her palaces": are they at all defaced? Psalms 48:12,13. What if Jerusalem be wicked? yet Sennacherib is insolent. If therefore Jerusalem shall be smitten with the rod of Sennacherib's fear, Sennacherib shall be smitten with the sword of God's revenges, who of all things cannot endure a presumptuous and self-confident vaunter; but will deal with his people not according to his ordinary rule, but according to his prerogative. Surely "Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of hosts; though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel," Jeremiah 51:5 .