Isaiah 3:1 - Exposition

The Lord, the Lord of hosts (see note on Isaiah 1:24 ). The stay and the staff ; rather, stay and staff . Neither word has the article. The latter is the feminine form of the former; and the intention is to announce that all support of every kind is about to be withdrawn. The whole stay of bread … of water. Mr. Cheyne agrees with Hitzig and Knobel that this clause is probably a gloss on the text, subsequently introduced into it, and a gloss which (lid not proceed from a very enlightened commentator. The "stay" and "staff" intended are certainly not, literal "bread" and "water," but the powerful and respectable classes enumerated in the two following verses. If the words are Isaiah's, he must have intended them to be taken metaphorically.