For while they be entwined together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.
For while they be entwined together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.
For entangled like thorns, and drunken as with their drink, they are consumed utterly as dry stubble.
For though they are like twisted thorns, and are overcome as with drink, they will come to destruction like stems of grass fully dry.
For while they are folded together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.
For entangled like thorns, and drunken as with their drink, they are consumed utterly like dry stubble.
For though they be like tangled thorns, told be drenched as it were in their drink, they shall be devoured utterly as dry stubble.
While they be folden together - However united their counsels may be, they shall be as drunken men - perplexed and unsteady in all their resolutions; and before God's judgments they shall be as dry thorns before a devouring fire.
For while they be leiden together as thorns - that is, as confused, intertwined, sharp, piercing, hard to be touched, rending and tearing whosoever would interfere with its tangled ways, and seemingly compact together and strong; "and while they are drunken as their drink" , not "drinkers" only but literally, "drunken," swallowed up, as it were, by their drink which they had swallowed, mastered, overcome, powerless, "they shall be derogated as stubble fully dry" , rapidly, in an instant, with an empty crackling sound, unresisting, as having nothing in them which can resist. Historically, the great defeat of the Assyrians, before the capture of Nineveh, took place while its king, flushed with success, was giving himself to listlessness; and having distributed to his soldiers victims, and abundance of wine, and other necessaries for banqueting, the whole army was negligent and drunken."
In like way Babylon was taken amid the feasting of Belshazzar Daniel 5:1-30; Benhadad was smitten, while "drinking himself drunk in the pavilions, he and the kings, the thirty and two kings that helped him" 1 Kings 20:16. And so it may well be meant here too, that Sennacherib's army, secure of their prey, were sunk in revelry, already swallowed up by wine, before they were swallowed up by the pestilence, on the night when the Angel of the Lord went out to smite them, and, from the sleep of revelry, they slept the sleep from which they shall not awake until the Judgment Day. God chooses the last moment of the triumph of the wicked, when he is flushed by his success, the last of the helplessness of the righteous, when his hope can be in the Lord alone, to exchange their lots. "The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked comes in his stead" Proverbs 11:8. Spiritually , "the false fullness of the rich of this world, is real leanness; the greenness of such grass (for all flesh is grass) is real dryness. Marvelous words, "fully dry." For what is dryness but emptiness?" They are perfected, but in dryness, and so perfectly prepared to be burned up. "The thorns had, as far as in them lay, choked the good seed, and hated the Seed-corn, and now are found, like stubble, void of all seed, fitted only to be burned with fire. For those who feast themselves "without fear is reserved the blackness of darkness forever" Jde 1:12-13.
1:10 As thorns - They shall be like thorns easily burnt, and like thorns folded together which burn together, and help to destroy each other.As drunkards - As men drunken, and unable to help themselves, so the Assyrians drunk with pleasure and pride, shall be surprised, and easily overthrown.