2 Nephi 13:1

[pam]

Reference Search: 2 Nephi 13:1

1 For behold, the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem, and from Judah, the stay and the staff, the whole staff of bread, and the whole stay of water—

Quotes for Discussion

What does it mean to “take away…the stay and the staff”?

Life is supported by bread and water…so that “breaking the staff of bread”…is equivalent to physical destruction.”

C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 7:129

“Stay” and “staff”…are the masculine and feminine forms of the same root, masen and masenah. By using both forms, Isaiah seems to suggest complete destruction….

Removing the staff…from a nation is analogous to suddenly taking away the props or stakes of a tent—the tent collapses shapeless on the ground. “The whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water” might be taken literally, since at both the first and second desolations of Jerusalem, the city was besieged and was at the mercy of a devastating famine. Jeremiah records in the seventh century B.C. that “the famine was probably even worse during a second siege in 70 A.D., for the ancient historian Josephus records the story of one woman, gone berserk from the ravages of war and famine, who roasted and ate her own child (Wars of the Jews, 6:3).

Victor L. Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet [salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982], 101