18“Your covenant with death will be canceled,
         And your pact with Sheol will not stand;
         When the overwhelming scourge passes through,
         Then you become its trampling place.

19“As often as it passes through, it will seize you;
         For morning after morning it will pass through, anytime during the day or night,
         And it will be sheer terror to understand what it means.”

20The bed is too short on which to stretch out,
         And the blanket is too small to wrap oneself in.

21For the LORD will rise up as at Mount Perazim,
         He will be stirred up as in the valley of Gibeon,
         To do His task, His unusual task,
         And to work His work, His extraordinary work.

22And now do not carry on as scoffers,
         Or your fetters will be made stronger;
         For I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts
         Of decisive destruction on all the earth.

23Give ear and hear my voice,
         Listen and hear my words.

24Does the farmer plow continually to plant seed?
         Does he continually turn and harrow the ground?

25Does he not level its surface
         And sow dill and scatter cummin
         And plant wheat in rows,
         Barley in its place and rye within its area?

26For his God instructs and teaches him properly.

27For dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
         Nor is the cartwheel driven over cummin;
         But dill is beaten out with a rod, and cummin with a club.

28Grain for bread is crushed,
         Indeed, he does not continue to thresh it forever.
         Because the wheel of his cart and his horses eventually damage it,
         He does not thresh it longer.

29This also comes from the LORD of hosts,
         Who has made His counsel wonderful and His wisdom great.

NASB ©1995

American Standard Version
And your covenant with death shall be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And Sour league with death shall be abolished, and your covenant with hell shall not stand: when the overflowing scourge shall pass, you shall be trodden down by it.

Darby Bible Translation
And your covenant with death shall be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, ye shall be trodden down by it.

English Revised Version
And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

Webster's Bible Translation
And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

World English Bible
Your covenant with death shall be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol shall not stand. When the overflowing scourge passes through, then you will be trampled down by it.

Young's Literal Translation
And disannulled hath been your covenant with death, And your provision with Sheol doth not stand, An overflowing scourge, when it passeth over, Then ye have been to it for a treading-place.June 8. "Bread Corn is Bruised" (Isa. xxviii. 28).
"Bread corn is bruised" (Isa. xxviii. 28). The farmer does not gather timothy and blue grass, and break it with a heavy machine. But he takes great pains with the wheat. So God takes great pains with those who are to be of much use to Him. There is a nature in them that needs this discipline. Don't wonder if the bread corn is treated with the wise, discriminating care that will fit it for food. He knows the way He is taking, and there is infinite tenderness in the oversight He gives. He is watching …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

The Foundation of God
'Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.'--ISAIAH xxviii. 16. 'Therefore thus saith the Lord.' Then these great words are God's answer to something. And that something is the scornful defiance by the rulers of Israel of the prophet's threatenings. By their deeds, whether by their words or no, they said that they had made friends of their enemies, and that …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

God's Strange Work
'That He may do His work, His strange work; and bring to pass His act, His strange act.'--ISAIAH xxviii. 21. How the great events of one generation fall dead to another! There is something very pathetic in the oblivion that swallows up world- resounding deeds. Here the prophet selects two instances which to him are solemn and singular examples of divine judgment, and we have difficulty in finding out to what he refers. To him they seemed the most luminous illustrations he could find of the principle …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Man's Crown and God's
'In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty.'--ISAIAH xxviii. 5. 'Thou shall also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord.'--ISAIAH lxii 3. Connection of first prophecy--destruction of Samaria. Its situation, crowning the hill with its walls and towers, its fertile 'fat valley,' the flagrant immorality and drunkenness of its inhabitants, and its final ruin, are all presented in the highly imaginative picture of its fall as being like the trampling …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Judgment of Drunkards and Mockers
'Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine! 2. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which, as a tempest of hail, and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. 3. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet: 4. And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Husbandman and his Operations
'Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. 24. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground! 25. When lie hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? 26. For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. 27. For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

A Crown Op Pride or a Crown of Glory
'The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet; 4. And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up. 5. In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people.'--ISAIAH xxviii. 3-5. The reference is probably to Samaria as a chief city of …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Bed and Its Covering
Now, I think it may be readily granted, that man's body is, after all, only a picture of his inner being: just what the body needs materially, that the soul needs spiritually. The soul, then, needs two things. It requires rest, which is pictured to us in sleep. The soul needs a bed upon which it may repose quietly and take its ease. And, again, the soul needs covering, for as a naked body would be both uncomfortable, unseemly, and dangerous; much more would the naked soul be unhappy, noxious to the …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 5: 1859

The Extent of Messiah's Spiritual Kingdom
The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever! T he Kingdom of our Lord in the heart, and in the world, is frequently compared to a building or house, of which He Himself is both the Foundation and the Architect (Isaiah 28:16 and 54:11, 12) . A building advances by degrees (I Corinthians 3:9; Ephesians 2:20-22) , and while it is in an unfinished state, a stranger cannot, by viewing its present appearance, form an accurate judgment …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

Of Predestination
Eph. i. 11.--"In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will."--Rom. ix. 22, 23.--"What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared unto glory." In the creation of the world, it pleased the Lord, …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

Samaria. Sychem.
"The country of Samaria lies in the middle, between Judea and Galilee. For it begins at a town called Ginea, lying in the Great plain, and ends at the Toparchy of the Acrabateni: the nature of it nothing differing from Judea," &c. [Acrabata was distant from Jerusalem, the space of a day's journey northwards.] Samaria, under the first Temple, was the name of a city,--under the second, of a country. Its metropolis at that time was Sychem; "A place destined to revenges": and which the Jews, as it seems, …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Isaiah 28:18 NIV • Isaiah 28:18 NLT • Isaiah 28:18 ESV • Isaiah 28:18 NASB • Isaiah 28:18 KJV • Isaiah 28:18 Bible Apps • Isaiah 28:18 Parallel • Bible Hub