Bible Strands
Isaiah 9:18
For wickedness burns like a fire that consumes the thorns and briers and kindles the forest thickets, which roll upward in billows of smoke.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The Lord speaks to a corrupt people during a declaration of unrelenting judgment, following a statement that His anger remains fixed and His hand stays raised against their godlessness.
The words — The text highlights רִשְׁעָ֔ה (rish.'Ah) = wickedness and תֹּאכֵ֑ל (to.Khel) = it consumes to show how moral corruption actively devours the surrounding community.
The thread — This fire imagery recurs in Psalms 83:14 and Malachi 4:1 to depict divine wrath consuming the arrogant, while Isaiah 5:24 applies the same devouring flame to the decay of the wicked.
Why it lands — The passage demands recognition that unrepentant sin operates as a self-perpetuating destruction, leaving no room for human mercy and requiring the reader to face the certainty of divine justice.
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
For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.
Cross-references
- Psalms 83:14 As fire consumes a forest, as a flame sets the mountains ablaze,
- Malachi 4:1 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble; the day is coming when I will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of Hosts. “Not a root or branch will be left to them.”
- Isaiah 5:24 Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes the straw, and as dry grass shrivels in the flame, so their roots will decay and their blossoms will blow away like dust; for they have rejected the instruction of the LORD of Hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
- Isaiah 34:8 For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
- Nahum 1:10 For they will be entangled as with thorns and consumed like the drink of a drunkard—like stubble that is fully dry.
- Numbers 11:1 Soon the people began to complain about their hardship in the hearing of the LORD, and when He heard them, His anger was kindled, and fire from the LORD blazed among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp.
- Deuteronomy 32:22 For a fire has been kindled by My anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol; it consumes the earth and its produce, and scorches the foundations of the mountains.
- Job 31:11 For that would be a heinous crime, an iniquity to be judged.
- Psalms 37:20 But the wicked and enemies of the LORD will perish like the glory of the fields. They will vanish; like smoke they will fade away.
- Isaiah 1:31 The strong man will become tinder and his work will be a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the flames.