Isaiah 3:25
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Your men will fall by the sword, and your warriors in battle.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
The prophet now passes over to a direct address to Jerusalem itself, since the "daughters of Zion" and the daughter of Zion in her present degenerate condition. The daughter of Zion loses her sons, and consequently the daughters of Zion their husbands. - "Thy men will fall by the sword, and thy might in war." The plural methim (the singular of which only occurs in the form methu, with the connecting vowel ū as a component part of the proper names) is used as a prose word in the Pentateuch; but in the later literature it is a poetic archaism. "Thy might" is used interchangeably with "thy men," the possessors of the might being really intended, like robur and robora in Latin (compare Jer 49:35).
Open source ↗The prophet, in this chapter, goes on to foretel the desolations that were coming upon Judah and Jerusalem for their sins, both that by the Babylonians and that which completed their ruin by the Romans, with some of the grounds of God's controversy with them. God threatens, I. To deprive them of all the supports both of their life and of their government (Isa 3:1-3). II. To leave them to fall into confusion and disorder (Isa 3:4, Isa 3:5, Isa 3:12). III. To deny them the blessing of magistracy (Isa 3:6-8). IV. To strip the daughters of Zion of their ornaments (Isa 3:17-24). V. To lay all waste by the sword of war (Isa 3:25, Isa 3:26). The sins that provoked God to deal thus with them were, 1. Their defiance of God (Isa 3:8). 2. Their impudence (Isa 3:9). 3. The abuse of power to oppression and tyranny (Isa 3:12-15). 4. The pride of the daughters of Zion (Isa 3:16). In the midst of the chapter the prophet is directed how to address particular persons. (1.) To assure good people that it should be well with them, notwithstanding those general calamities (Isa 3:10). (2.) To assure wicked people that, however God might, in judgment, remember mercy, yet it should go ill with them (Isa 3:11). O that the nations of the earth, at this day, would hearken to rebukes and warnings which this chapter gives!
Open source ↗3:25 The men . . . will die in battle: Part of the city’s hopeless destitution would be the deaths of the men.
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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Therefore, hand their children over to famine; pour out the power of the sword upon them. Let their wives become childless and widowed; let their husbands be slain by disease, their young men struck down by the sword in battle.
So this is what the LORD of Hosts says: “I will punish them. Their young men will die by the sword, their sons and daughters by famine.
And in this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, by the hands of those who seek their lives, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.
All the sinners among My people will die by the sword— all those who say, ‘Disaster will never draw near or confront us.’”
Both young and old lie together in the dust of the streets. My young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered them without compassion.
If I go out to the country, I see those slain by the sword; if I enter the city, I see those ravaged by famine! For both prophet and priest travel to a land they do not know.’”
But if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
For behold, this is why our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and daughters and wives are in captivity.
Whoever stays in this city will die by sword and famine and plague, but whoever goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans who besiege you will live; he will retain his life like a spoil of war.