Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. Your country is desolate, your cities (are) burnt with fire. Judah had not in Uzziah's reign recovered from the ravages of the Syrians in Joash's reign (2 Chronicles 24:24), and of Israel in Amaziah's reign, (2 Chronicles 25:13; 2 Chronicles 25:23, etc.) Compare Isaiah's contemporary, Amos (Amos 4:6-11), where, as here (Isaiah 1:9-10), Israel is compared to "Sodom and Gomorrah," because of the judgments on it by "fire."
Your land, strangers devour it in your presence - before your eyes; without your being able to prevent them.
And it is desolate ... - literature, there is desolation, such as is the overthrow (to be looked for) from foreign invaders. Distant foes are more merciless than neighbours to a conquered country (Deuteronomy 29:23). But the description of Judah's state politically and morally is too strong to be limited to Isaiah's time. For Uzziah and Jotham "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord," and Judah was prosperous. The ulterior reference is to Messianic times, when Judah "filled up the measure of their fathers' sins" (Matthew 23:32; 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16), and so provoked God to bring upon them the "wrath to the uttermost," in the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews by the Romans.