Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 17:13

"The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm." — Isaiah 17:13 (ASV)

But God shall rebuke them. — Better, He shall rebuke. The insertion of the word “God” weakens the force of the sublime indefiniteness of the Hebrew.

Like a rolling thing. — The Hebrew word is the same as the “wheel” of Psalm 83:13, and probably refers, like the “chaff of the mountains,” to the whirling dust-clouds driven from an elevated threshing-floor before the wind (Psalms 1:4; Psalms 35:5). There is no sufficient authority for the “thistle-down” of the margin.