Isaiah 2:22

Cease ye from man. If such is to be the fate of evil men, why trust longer in them? God’s people were trusting in their own cleverness and in the assistance of their heathen neighbors. They ought to turn to God and find in Him in their help and strength.

The import of the words, “Cease ye from man,” is similar to that of Christ’s admonition to His disciples as recorded in Matt. 10:17, “Beware of men.” Again and again God warned Israel not to place their trust in human strength, either their own or that of such neighboring nations as Egypt and Assyria, but rather to have confidence in what He could and would do for them, if faithful to Him. As at the Red Sea, at Jericho, and before the gates of Jerusalem in the days of Sennacherib, God proved the sufficiency of divine power.

Whose breath. These words emphasize the frailty of the life of man (see Gen. 2:7; 7:22; Ps. 146:3, 4). It was God who gave man breath and life, and when his breath leaves him, life ceases. Why depend upon frail, mortal beings for help when God promises to provide guidance and strength?

Wherein is he to be accounted of? Or, “of what value is he?” “of what account is he?” Who is man, and what can he do, that such great reliance should be placed upon him? Men vaunt themselves and set themselves up in defiance against the great God of heaven, rejecting His word and refusing to walk in His ways. These men will utterly perish, together with the things they have made, whereas God and truth will never perish. Why turn to men who have turned against God? Nothing in the vaunted civilization man has built and in which he takes such boundless pride is worth preserving. His high towers and walls, his ships of Tarshish, his treasures of gold and silver, will perish in the day when the Lord “ariseth to shake terribly the earth” (v. 19). The proud and the lofty will be brought low, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

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