Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 24:20

"The earth shall stagger like a drunken man, and shall sway to and fro like a hammock; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it, and it shall fall, and not rise again." — Isaiah 24:20 (ASV)

The earth shall reel to and fro ... —The point of the first comparison is obvious. (Compare a similar illustration of a ship tossed by the waves in Psalm 107:27.) The second becomes clearer if we render hammock instead of cottage: a hanging mat, suspended from a tree, in which the keeper of the vineyard slept, moving with every breath of wind—the very symbol of instability.

In the words that follow, the prophet traces the destruction to its source. The physical catastrophe is not the result of merely physical causes. The earth totters under the weight of its iniquity, and falls (we must remember the Hebrew idea of the world as resting upon pillars, 1 Samuel 2:8), never to rise again. In its vision of the last things, the picture finds a parallel, though under different imagery, in 2 Peter 3:10–13.