1. God here appears against Jerusalem; judgment begins at the house of God. When the day of the Lord comes (v. 1) Jerusalem must pass through the fire to be refined. God himself gathers all nations against Jerusalem to battle (v. 2); he gives them a charge, as he did Sennacherib, to take the spoil and to take the prey (Isa. x. 6), for the people of Jerusalem have now become the people of his wrath. And who can stand before him or before nations gathered by him? Where he gives commission he will give success. The city shall be taken by the Romans, who have nations at command; the houses shall be rifled, and all the riches of them taken away, by the enemy; and, to gratify an insatiable lust of uncleanness as well as avarice, the women shall be ravished, as if victory were a license to the worst of villanies, jusque datum sceleri—and crimes were sanctioned by law. One-half of the city shall then be carried into captivity, to be sold or enslaved, and shall not be able to help itself, such is the destruction that shall be made in the great and terrible day of the Lord.