4 And your spoil shall be gathered like the gathering of the caterpiller: as the running to and fro of locusts shall he run upon them.
4 Your plunder, O nations, is harvested as by young locusts; like a swarm of locusts people pounce on it.
4 and your spoil is gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, it is leapt upon.
4 Your people, for a change, got in on the loot, picking the field clean of the enemy spoils.
4 And Your plunder shall be gathered Like the gathering of the caterpillar; As the running to and fro of locusts, He shall run upon them.
4 Just as caterpillars and locusts strip the fields and vines, so the fallen army of Assyria will be stripped!
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Isaiah 33:4
Commentary on Isaiah 33:1-14
(Read Isaiah 33:1-14)
Here we have the proud and false destroyer justly reckoned with for all his fraud and violence. The righteous God often pays sinners in their own coin. Those who by faith humbly wait for God, shall find him gracious to them; as the day, so let the strength be. If God leaves us to ourselves any morning, we are undone; we must every morning commit ourselves to him, and go forth in his strength to do the work of the day. When God arises, his enemies are scattered. True wisdom and knowledge lead to strength of salvation, which renders us stedfast in the ways of God; and true piety is the only treasure which can never be plundered or spent. The distress Jerusalem was brought into, is described. God's time to appear for his people, is, when all other helpers fail. Let all who hear what God has done, acknowledge that he can do every thing. Sinners in Zion will have much to answer for, above other sinners. And those that rebel against the commands of the word, cannot take its comforts in time of need. His wrath will burn those everlastingly who make themselves fuel for it. It is a fire that shall never be quenched, nor ever go out of itself; it is the wrath of an ever-living God preying on the conscience of a never-dying soul.