Isaiah 10:4

Without me they shall bow down... — The Hebrew text is obscure, but these words were probably intended as the answer to the taunting question that had preceded them. Dropping the direct address, and passing to the third person, the prophet seems to say as with a kind of ominous “aside,” “No, there is no ally, no hiding-place but this, except they bow down among the captives or fall among the slain.” Exile or death, that was their only alternative. When that sentence has been uttered, the doom-bell, as we have called it, “For all this ...” tolls once more. If we adopt the Authorised version we have the same fact asserted, with the suggested thought that there was a refuge to be found in God.