(19) Cast their silver in the streets.--As in the rout of an army the soldier throws away everything, even his most valuable things, as impediments to his flight and temptations to the pursuing enemy, so the Israelites in their terror should abandon everything. Their riches will be utterly unavailing. The expression in the original is even stronger: their gold shall be to them "an unclean thing," "filth," because they shall perceive that it has been to them an occasion of sin.

Verse 19. - They shall cast their silver, etc. The words remind us of Isaiah 2:20 and Isaiah 30:22, with the difference that here it is the silver and gold as such, and not the idols made of them, that are to be flung away. They had made the actual metal their idol, and their confidence in it should be powerless to deliver them (Zephaniah 1:18). Their gold shall be removed; better, with the Revised Version, as an unclean thing. The word implies the kind of impurity of Ezekiel 18:6; Ezekiel 22:10; Ezekiel 36:17; Isaiah 30:22. Instead of gloating, as they had done, over their money, men should shrink from it, as though its very touch brought pollution. The Vulgate gives in sterquilinium, "to the dunghill." They shall not satisfy their souls. In the horrors of the siege, with everything at famine prices (2 Kings 6:25), and little or nothing to be had for them, their money would not stop the cravings of hunger. It is characteristic that he applies to riches as such the very same epithet, stumbling block of their iniquity, as he had applied before (Ezekiel 3:20) to actual idolatry (comp. Colossians 3:5).

7:16-22 Sooner or later, sin will cause sorrow; and those who will not repent of their sin, may justly be left to pine away in it. There are many whose wealth is their snare and ruin; and the gaining the world is the losing of their souls. Riches profit not in the day of wrath. The wealth of this world has not that in it which will answer the desires of the soul, or be any satisfaction to it in a day of distress. God's temple shall stand them in no stead. Those are unworthy to be honoured with the form of godliness, who will not be governed by its power.They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed,.... As being of no use unto them to preserve them from famine and pestilence, and as being an hinderance to them in their flight from the enemy. Kimchi observes that this may be interpreted of their idols of gold and silver, which shall now be had in contempt by them, and cast away, when they shall find they cannot save them from ruin; see Isaiah 2:20;

their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; these can neither deliver from temporal judgments nor from wrath to come; see Proverbs 10:2; nor idols made of them:

they shall not satisfy their souls, nor fill their bowels; gold and silver cannot be eaten; these will not satisfy the craving appetite, nor fill the hungry belly: the words show that the famine would be so great, that bread could not be got for any money; and therefore gold and silver would be of no avail; since they could not be fed upon, or give any satisfaction to a famishing soul; nor could idols of gold and silver neither:

because it is the stumbling block of their iniquity; what was the occasion of their iniquity, covetousness, and idolatry, at which they stumbled, and fell into sin, and so into punishment for it.