(Isa. 3:1)
“Stay” and “staff”… are the masculine and feminine forms of the same root, masen and masenah. By using both forms, Isaiah seems to suggest complete destruction… .
Removing the staff … from a nation is analogous to suddenly taking away the props or stakes of a tent—the tent collapses shapeless on the ground. “The whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water” might be taken literally, since at both the first and second desolations of Jerusalem, the city was besieged and was at the mercy of a devastating famine. Jeremiah records in the seventh century b.c. that “the famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land” (Jer. 52:6). The famine was probably even worse during a second siege in 70 a.d., for the ancient historian Josephus records the story of one woman, gone berserk from the ravages of war and famine, who roasted and ate her own child (Wars of the Jews, 6:3).
(Victor L. Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982], 101.)
The idea of eating, as a metaphor for receiving spiritual benefit, was familiar to Christ’s hearers, and was as readily understood as our expressions—“devouring a book,” or “drinking in” instruction. In Isaiah 3:1, the words “the whole stay of bread,” were explained by the rabbis as referring to their own teaching, and they laid it down as a rule, that wherever, in Ecclesiastes, allusion was made to food or drink, it meant study of the law, and the practice of good works… . Nothing was more common in the schools and synagogs than the phrases of eating and drinking, in a metaphorical sense.
(Geikie, Life and Words of Christ, vol.1, 184, as found in James E. Talmage Jesus the Christ: A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy Scriptures both Ancient and Modern [Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981], 247–348.)