Isaiah 9:10

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

⁸The Lord has sent a message against Jacob, and it has fallen upon Israel. ⁹All the people will know it-Ephraim and the dwellers of Samaria. With pride and arrogance of heart they will say: ¹⁰"The bricks have fallen, but we will rebuild with finished stone; the sycamores have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars."¹¹The LORD has raised up the foes of Rezin against him and joined his enemies together. ¹²Aram from the east and Philistia from the west have devoured Israel with open mouths. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised. ¹³But the people did not return to Him who struck them; they did not seek the LORD of Hosts. ¹⁴So the LORD will cut off Israel's head and tail, both palm branch and reed in a single day. ¹⁵The head is the elder and the honorable man and the tail is the prophet who teaches lies. ¹⁶For those who guide this people mislead them, and those they mislead are swallowed up. ¹⁷Therefore the Lord takes no pleasure in their young men; He has no compassion on their fatherless and widows. For every one of them is godless and wicked, and every mouth speaks folly. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

bricks: 1 Kings 7:9-12, 1 Kings 10:27, Malachi 1:4

Reciprocal: Genesis 11:3 - brick 2 Chronicles 1:15 - sycamore trees 2 Chronicles 9:27 - the sycamore Jeremiah 43:2 - all the Hosea 5:5 - the pride Luke 19:4 - a sycamore

Cross-References

Genesis 8:1
But God remembered Noah and all the animals and livestock that were with him in the ark. And He sent a wind over the earth, and the waters began to subside.

Genesis 9:1
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

Genesis 9:5
And surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. I will demand an accounting from anyone who takes the life of his fellow man:

Genesis 9:6
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind.

Genesis 9:15
I will remember My covenant between Me and you and all living creatures: Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.

Genesis 9:16
And whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of every kind that is on the earth."

Psalms 145:9
The LORD is good to all; His compassion rests on all He has made.

Jonah 4:11
So should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well?"

Gill's Notes on the Bible

The bricks are fallen down,.... Houses made of bricks, which were without the cities besieged and destroyed by the Assyrians; of which the haughty Israelites made no account, looking upon such a desolation as little, or no loss at all:

but we will build with hewn stone, so that the houses will be better and stronger, more beautiful, and more durable:

the sycamores are cut down; which grew in the fields, and outer parts of the cities, and were but a mean sort of wood, and which the Assyrians cut down to serve several purposes in their siege; of this sort of trees, :-:

but we will change them into cedars; that is, will plant cedars in place of them; trees tall and large, very delightful to look at, of great worth and usefulness, and very durable; though this may regard not so much the planting of them as the use of them in building, and the sense be agreeable to the former clause; that as, instead of brick, they would build houses with hewn stone; so, instead of sycamore wood, which was not so substantial and durable, and fit for building, they would make use of cedar, which was both beautiful and lasting; so the Septuagint,

"the bricks are fallen, let us hew stones, and cut down sycamores and cedars, and build for ourselves a tower;''

and so the Arabic version; so that, upon the whole, they flattered themselves they should be gainers, and not losers, by the Assyrian invasion; thus deriding it, and despising the prophecy concerning it. Jarchi interprets the bricks and sycamores of the kings that went before, as Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, in whose days they were lessened, and were like a building of brick, broken and falling; but their present king, Pekah, the son of Remaliah, was strong, like a building of hewn stone, and so cedars were better for building than sycamores; and to this sense agrees the Targum,

"the heads (or princes) are carried captive, but we will appoint better in their room; goods are spoiled, but what are more beautiful than them we will purchase.''

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The bricks are fallen down - The language of this verse is figurative; but the sentiment is plain. It contains the confession of the inhabitants of Samaria, that their affairs were in a ruinous and dilapidated state; but also their self-confident assurance that they would be able to repair the evils, and restore their nation to more than their former magnificence.

Bricks, in oriental countries, were made of clay and straw, and were rarely turned. Hence, exposed to suns and rains, they soon dissolved. Walls and houses constructed of such materials would not be very permanent, and to build with them is strongly contrasted with building in a permanent and elegant manner with hewn stone.

The meaning is, that their former state was one of less splendor than they designed that their subsequent state should be. Desolation had come in upon their country, and this they could not deny. But they confidently boasted that they would more than repair the evil.

We will build - Our ruined houses and walls.

With hewn stones - At once more permanent and elegant than the structures of bricks had been.

The sycamores - These trees grew abundantly on the low lands of Judea, and were very little esteemed; 1 Kings 10:27; 2Ch 1:15; 2 Chronicles 9:27.

‘This curious tree seems to partake of the nature of two different species,’ says Calmet, ‘the mulberry and the fig; the former in its leaf, and the latter in its fruit. Its Greek name, συκόμορος sukomoros, is plainly descriptive of its character, being compounded of συκος sukos, a fig tree, and μορος moros, a mulberry tree. It is thus described by Norden: “They have in Egypt divers sorts of figs; but if there is any difference between them, a particular kind differs still more. I mean that which the sycamore bears, that they name in Arabic giomez. This sycamore is of the height of a beech, and bears its fruit in a manner quite different from other trees. It has them on the trunk itself, which shoots out little sprigs in form of a grapestalk, at the end of which grows the fruit close to one another, most like bunches of grapes. The tree is always green, and bears fruit several times in the year, without observing any certain seasons, for I have seen some sycamores which had fruit two months after others. This sort of tree is pretty common in Egypt.”’ They were not highly valued, though it is probable they were often employed in building.

They are contrasted with cedars here -

(1) Because the cedar was a much more rare and precious wood.

(2) Because it was a much more smooth and elegant article of building.

(3) Because it was more permanent. The grain and texture of the sycamore is remarkably coarse and spongy, and could, therefore, stand in no competition with the cedar for beauty and ornament.

We will change them - We will employ in their stead.

Cedars - The cedar was a remarkably fine; elegant, and permanent wood for building. It was principally obtained on mount Lebanon, and was employed in temples, palaces, and in the houses of the rich; see the note at Isaiah 2:18.

The sycamore is contrasted with the cedar in 1 Kings 10:27 : ‘Cedars he made to be as sycamore trees.’ The whole passage denotes self-confidence and pride; an unwillingness to submit to the judgments of God, and a self-assurance that they would more than repair all the evils that would be inflicted on them.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Isaiah 9:10. The bricks — "The eastern bricks," says Sir John Chardin, (see Harmer's Observ. I., p. 176,) "are only clay well moistened with water, and mixed with straw, and dried in the sun." So that their walls are commonly no better than our mud walls; see Maundrell, p. 124. That straw was a necessary part in the composition of this sort of bricks, to make the parts of the clay adhere together, appears from Exodus 5:7-19. These bricks are properly opposed to hewn stone, so greatly superior in beauty and durableness. The sycamores, which, as Jerome on the place says, are timber of little worth, with equal propriety are opposed to the cedars. "As the grain and texture of the sycamore is remarkably coarse and spongy, it could therefore stand in no competition at all (as it is observed, Isaiah 9:10) with the cedar, for beauty and ornament." - Shaw, Supplement to Travels, p. 96. We meet with the same opposition of cedars to sycamores, 1 Kings 10:27, where Solomon is said to have made silver as the stones, and cedars as the sycamores in the vale for abundance. By this mashal, or figurative and sententious speech, they boast that they shall easily be able to repair their present losses, suffered perhaps by the first Assyrian invasion under Tiglath-pileser; and to bring their affairs to a more flourishing condition than ever.

Some of the bricks mentioned above lie before me. They were brought from the site of ancient Babylon. The straw is visible, kneaded with the clay; they are very hard, and evidently were dried in the sun; for they are very easily dissolved in water.