Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord [is] at hand,.... A time of severer and heavier judgments than these of the locusts, caterpillars, c. which were a presage and emblem of greater ones, even of the total destruction of their city, temple, and nation, either by the Chaldeans, or by the Romans, or both:
and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come unawares, suddenly, and irresistibly: there is in the Hebrew text an elegant play on words, which may be rendered, as "wasting from the waster", or "destruction from the destroyer, shall it come" x; even from the almighty God, who is able to save and destroy, and none can deliver out of his hands; see Isaiah 13:6; the word signifies one powerful and victorious, as Aben Ezra observes; and so it does in the Arabic language.
x כשד משדי "uti vastitas a Deo vastatore", Drusius.