“For behold, the day comes, burning like a furnace, when all the proud and all who work wickedness will be stubble. The day that comes will burn them up,” says the LORD of Armies, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 1. Furnace. At the day of judgment, the difference between the just and the wicked will plainly appear. Worthington.—This sense is most generally given, as well as to those words where our Saviour speaks of the signs of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the end of the world together. Matthew 24:3. Lu. 21:5. Yet the prophet may also allude to the punishment of the Jews by the Romans, when all were assembled at the Passover, ( Calmet.) a scourge which the Christians escaped by retiring to Pella. Eus. Hist iii. 5.—Proud. Septuagint “strangers.” Calmet.—Branch. No hope shall remain. Menochius.