Bible Strands
Isaiah 51:19
These pairs have befallen you: devastation and destruction, famine and sword. Who will grieve for you? Who can comfort you?
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The prophet addresses personified Jerusalem, describing her condition after her sons have perished and no guide remains to take her hand. The moment follows the declaration of her complete isolation amid divine judgment.
The words — שְׁתַּיִם (she.Ta.yim) translates literally to "two things," denoting the paired disasters listed. יָנוּד (ya.Nud) means "show sympathy" or "grieve," underscoring the absence of human condolence.
The thread — The motif of paired calamities recurs in Isaiah 47:9, where loss and widowhood overtake a city in a single day. The immediate context in verses 18 and 20 reinforces the theme of total desolation and the fullness of God's wrath.
Why it lands — The text demands acknowledgment that human comfort is absent when judgment reaches its peak. It forces the reader to confront the finality of divine rebuke before any possibility of restoration.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
These two things are come unto thee; who shall be sorry for thee? desolation, and destruction, and the famine, and the sword: by whom shall I comfort thee?
Cross-references
- Isaiah 47:9 These two things will overtake you in a moment, in a single day: loss of children, and widowhood. They will come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and the potency of your spells.
- Amos 7:2 And when the locusts had eaten every green plant in the land, I said, “Lord GOD, please forgive! How will Jacob survive, since he is so small?”
- Job 2:11 Now when Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, each of them came from his home, and they met together to go and sympathize with Job and comfort him.
- Job 42:11 All his brothers and sisters and prior acquaintances came and dined with him in his house. They consoled him and comforted him over all the adversity that the LORD had brought upon him. And each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.
- Psalms 69:20 Insults have broken my heart, and I am in despair. I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found no one.
- Ecclesiastes 4:1 Again I looked, and I considered all the oppression taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; the power lay in the hands of their oppressors, and there was no comforter.
- Isaiah 14:30 Then the firstborn of the poor will find pasture, and the needy will lie down in safety, but I will kill your root by famine, and your remnant will be slain.
- Isaiah 22:4 Therefore I said, “Turn away from me, let me weep bitterly! Do not try to console me over the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
- Isaiah 61:2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of our God’s vengeance, to comfort all who mourn,
- Jeremiah 9:17 This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Take note, and summon the wailing women; send for the most skillful among them.