(26) Affliction.--Better, oppression.

Bitter.--So the LXX., Syriac, and Vulg. Better, stubborn, and so, inveterate, unyielding, enduring. (Comp. Deuteronomy 21:18-20.) Targum, "hard;" Arabic, "strong" or "violent."

For there was . . . left.--Comp. Note on 1Kings 14:10.

Verse 26. - For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter (comp. 2 Kings 13:4, 23). The repetition is perhaps to be accounted for by the desire of the writer to explain how it came to pass that so great a deliverance was granted to Israel under a king who maintained the worship of the calves. He views it as the consequence of God's infinite compassion, and of the extreme bitterness of Israel's sufferings under the Syrians (comp. 2 Kings 13:7 and Amos 1:3). For there was not any shut up, nor any left (see the comment on 1 Kings 14:10), nor any helper for Israel. Apart from Jehovah, Israel had no one to come to her aid. Judah would not help her, for Judah had just suffered at her hands (vers. 11-14); still less would Philistia, or Moab, or Ammon, who were her constant enemies. Her isolation rendered her all the more an object for the Divine compassion.

14:23-29 God raised up the prophet Jonah, and by him declared the purposes of his favour to Israel. It is a sign that God has not cast off his people, if he continues faithful ministers among them. Two reasons are given why God blessed them with those victories: 1. Because the distress was very great, which made them objects of his compassion. 2. Because the decree was not yet gone forth for their destruction. Many prophets there had been in Israel, but none left prophecies in writing till this age, and their prophecies are part of the Bible. Hosea began to prophesy in the reign of this Jeroboam. At the same time Amos prophesied; soon after Micah, then Isaiah, in the days of Ahaz and Hezekiah. Thus God, in the darkest and most degenerate ages of the church, raised up some to be burning and shining lights in it; to their own age, by their preaching and living, and a few by their writings, to reflect light upon us in the last times.For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter,.... Being sorely oppressed by their enemies, especially the Syrians; and he was moved to have compassion upon them, and show mercy to them: for, there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel: they were in the most forlorn and helpless condition; See Gill on Deuteronomy 32:36.