When your fear cometh as desolation. The imagery in this verse is borrowed from nature—from the tempest and whirlwind, which, in their impetuous fury, involve all in irretrievable ruin. The two leading ideas here in the writer's mind are calamity and fear.
These—their fear, that which causes their fear; and their destruction, i.e. calamity—both representing Wisdom's, and so God's, judgment, will come on sinners as a wasting tempest and sweeping hurricane.
The terror and devastation caused by these latter as they pass over the face of nature are employed to depict the alarm and ruin of sinners. Desolation; שַׁאֲוָה (shaavah) is a wasting, crashing tempest (cf.
Proverbs 3:25; Zephaniah 1:15), derived from שָׁאַה (shaah). "to make a crash," as of a house falling. The Vulgate reads, repentura calamitas; the LXX; ἄφνω θόρυβος; both bringing out the idea of suddenness, and the latter that of the uproar of the tempest.
The Khetib, or traditional text of the manuscripts ( כְשַׁאֲוָה), is equivalent to the Keri, or emended reading ( כְשׁוֹאָה), and both appear to have the same root meaning. Destruction ( אֵיד, eyd); the same as "calamity ' in the preceding verse.
Whirlwind; סוּפָה (suphah), from the root סוּף (suph), "to snatch, or carry away," means a whirlwind carrying everything before it—the καταγίς of the LXX; or hurricane, as in Arist; 'Mund.,' 4, 16. Distress and anguish ( צָרָה וְצוּקָה, tsarah v'tzukah).
A corresponding alliteration occurs in Isaiah 30:6 and Zephaniah 1:15. The root signification of the former is that of compression, reproduced in the LXX. θλίψις, and the Vulgate tribulatio; that of the latter is narrowness.
LXX; πολιορκία, "a beleaguering;" Vulgate, angustga. The LXX. adds, at the close of this verse, ἢ ὅταν ἔρχηται ὑμῖν ὅλεθρος as explanatory.