“The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.”
10. The bricks are fallen down. These are the words of men who were obstinate, and who despised the calamity which they had sustained, as if it had been of advantage to them, because it afforded them an opportunity of adorning with greater splendor both their houses and their fields. “We shall build,” they say, “more magnificently.
Here are terrible threatenings, which are directed primarily against Israel, the kingdom of the ten tribes, Ephraim and Samaria, the ruin of which is here foretold, with all the woeful confusions that were the prefaces to that ruin, all which came to pass within a few years after; but they look further, to all the enemies of the throne and kingdom of Christ the Son...
Commenting on Isaiah 9:8-21
The bricks are fallen down,.... Houses made of bricks, which were without the cities besieged and destroyed by the Assyrians; of which the haughty Israelites made no account, looking upon such a desolation as little, or no loss at all: but we will build with hewn stone, so that the houses will be better and stronger, more beautiful, and more durable: the sycamores are cut...