To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
To me belongeth vengeance and recompense. It is my office, in the course of my providential government, to punish; and as I am well acquainted with all their sins, shall visit them in righteous retribution. Their foot shall slide in due time. Though they now fancy themselves secure, firm, and immovable, they shall ere long totter to their fall. The phraseology was founded on the difficulty of walking in a hill-country along narrow footpaths. 'Ours,' says Dr. Thomson ('Land and Book,' 1:, p. 106), 'has frequently been not more than a foot wide, of hard, smooth rock, and with a profound gorge yawning beneath. To slide and fall is, in a thousand places, certain destruction; and no threatenings against the workers of iniquity are more terrible than that they shall be set in slippery places, that their feet shall slide in due time.' This "due time" may be the captivity, or "the fullness of time," when, after their rejection and crucifixion of Christ, wrath came upon them to the wittermost (Acts 2:13; Galatians 4:4; 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16).
For the day of their calamity is at hand, х qaarowb (H7138); Septuagint, engus-is near. Although this awful judgment was not to be inflicted until a distant futurity, yet, as viewed through the telescope of prophecy, it might be said to be "at hand."
And the things that shall come upon them make haste. The punishment of sinners, though long deferred, is certain; and when they have filled up the measure of their iniquities, the judgment will forthwith fall in full weight upon them.