shall [one] take up a snare from the earth; the Targum adds, out of its time:and have taken nothing at all? when men set a snare to catch anything, do they take it up before anything is caught? they do not; they let it stand till something is ensnared in it, and so their end answered, and then they take it up, and not before.
And thus when God denounces or brings a judgment, or an affliction, upon a people, does he remove it before the end is answered by it?