Isaiah 2:22
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Put no more trust in man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
With this chapter begins a new sermon, which is continued in the two following chapters. The subject of this discourse is Judah and Jerusalem (Isa 2:1). In this chapter the prophet speaks, I. Of the glory of the Christians, Jerusalem, the gospel-church in the latter days, in the accession of many to it (Isa 2:2, Isa 2:3), and the great peace it should introduce into the world (Isa 2:4), whence he infers the duty of the house of Jacob (Isa 2:5). II. Of the shame of the Jews, Jerusalem, as it then was, and as it would be after its rejection of the gospel and being rejected of God. 1. Their sin was their shame (Isa 2:6-9). 2. God by his judgments would humble them and put them to shame (Isa 2:10-17). 3. They should themselves be ashamed of their confidence in their idols and in an arm of flesh (Isa 2:18-22). And now which of these Jerusalems will we be the inhabitants of - that which is full of the knowledge of God, which will be our everlasting honour, or that which is full of horses and chariots, and silver and gold, and such idols, which will in the end be our shame?
Open source ↗2:22 The judgment prophecy of 2:6-21 is set between two related exhortations: to trust the Lord (2:5) and not to put trust in human beings (2:22). • Human strength is temporary, frail as breath (see Ps 90).
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
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This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes the flesh his strength and turns his heart from the LORD.
Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man, who cannot save.
You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him?
Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
Lowborn men are but a vapor, the exalted but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor.
Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are considered a speck of dust on the scales; He lifts up the islands like fine dust.
as long as my breath is still within me and the breath of God remains in my nostrils,
Of all that was on dry land, everything that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.