Isaiah 13:7

Shall all hands be faint. — Better, be slack, hanging down in the helpless despondency of the terror which the next clause paints (Hebrews 12:12).

(7) They shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth. — The image of powerless agony occurs both in earlier and later prophets (Hosea 13:3; Micah 5:9; Jeremiah 6:24, et al.). Perhaps the most striking parallelism is found in Psalms 48:6, probably, like the other psalms of the sons of Korah, contemporary with Isaiah.

Their faces shall be as flames. — The comparison seems at first to describe those who cause terror rather than those that feel it. What is described is, however, the moment of horror, when the dejected pallor of ordinary fear flashes into a new intensity, and the eyeballs glare, and the face glows as with a terrible brightness.