Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.
Fear, and the pit, and the snare. This verse explains the wretchedness spoken of in Isaiah 24:16. Jeremiah (Jeremiah 48:43-44) uses the same words. They are proverbial; Isaiah 24:18 expressing that the inhabitants were nowhere safe: if they escaped one danger, they fell into another, and worse, on the opposite side (Amos 5:19.) "Fear" is the term applied to the cords with feathers of all colours which, when fluttered in the air, scare beasts into the pitfall, or birds into the snare. Horsley makes the connection: Indignant of the treatment which the Just One received, the prophet threatens the guilty land with instant vengeance. The ulterior reference seems to me to be to the sudden destruction which 'as a snare shall come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth,'-namely, on the unbelieving world of so-called Christendom (Luke 18:8; Luke 21:35).