Isa 2:19 | KD | STEP | What the idolaters themselves will do when Jehovah has so completely deprived their idols of all their divinity, is then described in : “And they will creep into caves in the rocks, and cellars in the earth, before the terrible look of Jehovah, and before the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to put the earth in terror.” Meârâh is a natural cave, and mechillah a subterraneous excavation: this is apparently the distinction between the two synonyms. “To put the earth in terror:” lârotz hâ - aretz , a significant paronomasia, which can be reproduced in Latin, thus: ut terreat terram . Thus the judgment would fall upon the earth without any limitation, upon men universally (compare the word hâ - âdâm in , which is scarcely ever applied to a single individual ( ), excepting, of course, the first man, but generally to men, or to the human race) and upon the totality of nature as interwoven in the history of man - one complete whole, in which sin, and therefore wrath, had gained the upper hand. When Jehovah rose up, i.e., stood up from His heavenly throne, to reveal the glory manifested in heaven, and turn its judicial fiery side towards the sinful earth, the earth would receive such a shock as would throw it into a state resembling the chaos of the beginning. We may see very clearly from , where this description is borrowed, that the prophet is here describing the last judgment, although from a national point of view and bounded by a national horizon. forms the commencement to the fourth strophe: “In that day will a man cast away his idols of gold and his idols of silver, which they made for him to worship, to the moles and to the bats.” The traditional text separates lachpor peroth into two words, though without its being possible to discover what they are supposed to mean. The reason for the separation was simply the fact that plurilitera were at one time altogether misunderstood and regarded as Composita : for other plurilitera , written as two words, compare ; Hos 4:18; Jer 46:20. The prophet certainly pronounced the word lachparpâroth (Ewald, §157, c ); and Chapharpârâh is apparently a mole (lit. thrower up of the soil), talpa , as it is rendered by Jerome and interpreted by Rashi. Gesenius and Knobel, however, have raised this objection, that the mole is never found in houses. But are we necessarily to assume that they would throw their idols into lumber-rooms, and not hide them in holes and crevices out of doors? The mole, the shrew-mouse, and the bat, whose name ( atalleph ) is regarded by Schultens as a compound word ( atal - eph , night-bird), are generically related, according to both ancient and modern naturalists. Bats are to birds what moles are to the smaller beasts of prey (vid., Levysohn, Zoologie des Talmud , p. 102). The lxx combine with these two words l'hishtachavoth (to worship). Malbim and Luzzatto adopt this rendering, and understand the words to mean that they would sink down to the most absurd descriptions of animal worship. But the accentuation, which does not divide the v. at עשׂוּ־לו, as we should expect if this were the meaning, is based upon the correct interpretation. The idolaters, convinced of the worthlessness of their idols through the judicial interposition of God, and enraged at the disastrous manner in which they had been deceived, would throw away with curses the images of gold and silver which artists’ hands had made according to their instructions, and hide them in the holes of bats and in mole-hills, to conceal them from the eyes of the Judge, and then take refuge there themselves after ridding themselves of this useless and damnable burden.

‏ Isaiah 2:19

What the idolaters themselves will do when Jehovah has so completely deprived their idols of all their divinity, is then described in Isa 2:19 : “And they will creep into caves in the rocks, and cellars in the earth, before the terrible look of Jehovah, and before the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to put the earth in terror.” Meârâh is a natural cave, and mechillah a subterraneous excavation: this is apparently the distinction between the two synonyms. “To put the earth in terror:” lârotz hâ-aretz, a significant paronomasia, which can be reproduced in Latin, thus: ut terreat terram. Thus the judgment would fall upon the earth without any limitation, upon men universally (compare the word hâ-âdâm in Isa 2:20, which is scarcely ever applied to a single individual (Jos 14:15), excepting, of course, the first man, but generally to men, or to the human race) and upon the totality of nature as interwoven in the history of man - one complete whole, in which sin, and therefore wrath, had gained the upper hand. When Jehovah rose up, i.e., stood up from His heavenly throne, to reveal the glory manifested in heaven, and turn its judicial fiery side towards the sinful earth, the earth would receive such a shock as would throw it into a state resembling the chaos of the beginning. We may see very clearly from Rev 6:15, where this description is borrowed, that the prophet is here describing the last judgment, although from a national point of view and bounded by a national horizon.

Isa 2:20 forms the commencement to the fourth strophe: “In that day will a man cast away his idols of gold and his idols of silver, which they made for him to worship, to the moles and to the bats.” The traditional text separates lachpor peroth into two words, ^{▼▼Abulwali=d Parchon and others regard the double word as the singular of a substantive, applied to a particular bird (possibly a woodpecker), as a pecker of fruit (peroth). Kimchi would rather take lachpor as an infinitive (as in Jos 2:2), to dig pits; and compares with it the talmudic word pēr, a pit or grave. No one adopts the rendering “into mouse-holes,” simply because pērah, a mouse (from an Arabic word fa'ara, to dig, or root up), was not a Hebrew word at all, but was adopted at a later period from the Arabic (hence the Hebraeo-Arabic purah, a mousetrap).} though without its being possible to discover what they are supposed to mean. The reason for the separation was simply the fact that plurilitera were at one time altogether misunderstood and regarded as Composita: for other plurilitera, written as two words, compare Isa 61:1; Hos 4:18; Jer 46:20. The prophet certainly pronounced the word lachparpâroth (Ewald, §157,c); and Chapharpârâh is apparently a mole (lit. thrower up of the soil), talpa, as it is rendered by Jerome and interpreted by Rashi. Gesenius and Knobel, however, have raised this objection, that the mole is never found in houses. But are we necessarily to assume that they would throw their idols into lumber-rooms, and not hide them in holes and crevices out of doors? The mole, the shrew-mouse, and the bat, whose name (atalleph) is regarded by Schultens as a compound word (atal-eph, night-bird), are generically related, according to both ancient and modern naturalists. Bats are to birds what moles are to the smaller beasts of prey (vid., Levysohn, Zoologie des Talmud, p. 102). The lxx combine with these two words l'hishtachavoth (to worship). Malbim and Luzzatto adopt this rendering, and understand the words to mean that they would sink down to the most absurd descriptions of animal worship. But the accentuation, which does not divide the v. at עשׂוּ־לו, as we should expect if this were the meaning, is based upon the correct interpretation. The idolaters, convinced of the worthlessness of their idols through the judicial interposition of God, and enraged at the disastrous manner in which they had been deceived, would throw away with curses the images of gold and silver which artists’ hands had made according to their instructions, and hide them in the holes of bats and in mole-hills, to conceal them from the eyes of the Judge, and then take refuge there themselves after ridding themselves of this useless and damnable burden.