Now therefore - In view of the certain judgment which God will bring upon you.

Be ye not mockers - This was the prevailing sin Isaiah 28:9-14, and on account of this sin in part the judgment of God was about to come upon the guilty nation.

Lest your bands be made strong - Lest your confinement should be more severe and protracted. God would punish them according to their sins, and if they now ceased to mock and deride him it would greatly mitigate the severity of their punishment (compare Isaiah 24:22).

For I have heard ... - I, the prophet, have heard Yahweh of hosts threaten a consumption.

A consumption ... - (see this phrase explained in the note at Isaiah 10:23)

Upon the whole earth - The whole land of Judea (see the note at Isaiah 24:1).

Isaiah 28:22 Parallel Commentaries

The Husbandman and his Operations
'Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. 24. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground! 25. When lie hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? 26. For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. 27. For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

How to Make Use of Christ for Steadfastness, in a Time when Truth is Oppressed and Borne Down.
When enemies are prevailing, and the way of truth is evil spoken of, many faint, and many turn aside, and do not plead for truth, nor stand up for the interest of Christ, in their hour and power of darkness: many are overcome with base fear, and either side with the workers of iniquity, or are not valiant for the truth, but being faint-hearted, turn back. Now the thoughts of this may put some who desire to stand fast, and to own him and his cause in a day of trial, to enquire how they shall make …
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life

Of Orders.
Of this sacrament the Church of Christ knows nothing; it was invented by the church of the Pope. It not only has no promise of grace, anywhere declared, but not a word is said about it in the whole of the New Testament. Now it is ridiculous to set up as a sacrament of God that which can nowhere be proved to have been instituted by God. Not that I consider that a rite practised for so many ages is to be condemned; but I would not have human inventions established in sacred things, nor should it be …
Martin Luther—First Principles of the Reformation