Isaiah 9:2

The people; the people of God, Israel and Judah, and especially those of them mentioned in the foregoing verse. Walked; in Matthew 4:16, it is sat. It notes not their gesture, but their state or condition, they lived or abode. Only walking in darkness is more perilous than sitting. Darkness: the expression is general, and so may well comprehend both the darkness of calamity, and the darkness of ignorance, and idolatry, and profaneness, in which those parts were eminently involved, by reason of their great distance from God's sanctuary, and by their frequent converse with the Gentiles, who bordered upon them, and of which this place is expounded, Mt 4. Have seen, i.e. shall see, at the coming of the Messiah. The land of the shadow of death; which notes both extreme, and dangerous, or deadly darkness.