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22. Prophecy About Jerusalem

¹ A prophecy against the Valley of Vision:

   What troubles you now,
   that you have all gone up on the roofs,
² you town so full of commotion,
   you city of tumult and revelry?
Your slain were not killed by the sword,
   nor did they die in battle.
³ All your leaders have fled together;
   they have been captured without using the bow.
All you who were caught were taken prisoner together,
   having fled while the enemy was still far away.
⁴ Therefore I said, “Turn away from me;
   let me weep bitterly.
Do not try to console me
   over the destruction of my people.”

    ⁵ The Lord, the LORD Almighty, has a day
   of tumult and trampling and terror
   in the Valley of Vision,
a day of battering down walls
   and of crying out to the mountains.
⁶ Elam takes up the quiver,
   with her charioteers and horses;
   Kir uncovers the shield.
⁷ Your choicest valleys are full of chariots,
   and horsemen are posted at the city gates.

    ⁸ The Lord stripped away the defenses of Judah,
   and you looked in that day
   to the weapons in the Palace of the Forest.
⁹ You saw that the walls of the City of David
   were broken through in many places;
you stored up water
   in the Lower Pool.
¹⁰ You counted the buildings in Jerusalem
   and tore down houses to strengthen the wall.
¹¹ You built a reservoir between the two walls
   for the water of the Old Pool,
but you did not look to the One who made it,
   or have regard for the One who planned it long ago.

    ¹² The Lord, the LORD Almighty,
   called you on that day
to weep and to wail,
   to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth.
¹³ But see, there is joy and revelry,
   slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep,
   eating of meat and drinking of wine!
“Let us eat and drink,” you say,
   “for tomorrow we die!”

¹⁴ The LORD Almighty has revealed this in my hearing: “Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for,” says the Lord, the LORD Almighty.

¹⁵ This is what the Lord, the LORD Almighty, says:

   “Go, say to this steward,
   to Shebna the palace administrator:
¹⁶ What are you doing here and who gave you permission
   to cut out a grave for yourself here,
hewing your grave on the height
   and chiseling your resting place in the rock?

    ¹⁷ “Beware, the LORD is about to take firm hold of you
   and hurl you away, you mighty man.
¹⁸ He will roll you up tightly like a ball
   and throw you into a large country.
There you will die
   and there the chariots you were so proud of
   will become a disgrace to your master’s house.
¹⁹ I will depose you from your office,
   and you will be ousted from your position.

²⁰ “In that day I will summon my servant, Eliakim son of Hilkiah. ²¹ I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him. He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the people of Judah. ²² I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. ²³ I will drive him like a peg into a firm place; he will become a seat Or throne of honor for the house of his father. ²⁴ All the glory of his family will hang on him: its offspring and offshoots—all its lesser vessels, from the bowls to all the jars.

²⁵ “In that day,” declares the LORD Almighty, “the peg driven into the firm place will give way; it will be sheared off and will fall, and the load hanging on it will be cut down.” The LORD has spoken.

6. But Elam carrying the quiver. Here commentators think that the discourse proceeds without any interruption, and that he makes known to the Jews the same judgment which he formerly proclaimed. But when I examine the whole matter more closely, I am constrained to differ from them. I think that the Prophet reproaches the Jews for their obstinacy and rebellion, because, though the Lord had chastised them, they did not repent, and that he relates the history of a past transaction, in order to remind them how utterly they had failed to derive advantage from the Lord’s chastisements. Such then is the manner in which these statements ought to be separated from what came before. First, he foretold those things which would come on the Jews, and now he shews how justly they are punished, and how richly they deserve those sharp chastisements which the Lord inflicts on them; for the Lord had formerly called them to repentance, not only by words, but by deeds, and yet no reformation of life followed, though their riches were exhausted, and the kingdom weakened, but they obstinately persisted in their wickedness. Nothing therefore remained but that the Lord should miserably destroy them, since they were obstinate and refractory.

The copulative ו (vau) I have translated But, which is the meaning that it frequently bears. Those who think that the Prophet threatens for a future period, preserve its ordinary meaning, as if the Prophet, after having mentioned God, named the executioners of his vengeance. But I have already given the exposition which I prefer, and the context will make it still more clear, that I had good reasons for being of that opinion.

When he speaks of the “Elamites” and the “Cyrenaeans,” this applies better, I think, to the Assyrians than to the Babylonians; for although those nations had never make war against the Jews by troops under their own command, yet it is probable that they were in the pay of the Assyrian king, and that they formed part of his army while he was besieging Jerusalem. We have already remarked that, taking a part for the whole, by the “Elamites” are meant the eastern nations.

And Kir making bare the shield ⁸²⁸² {Bogus footnote} By Kir he undoubtedly means the inhabitants of Cyrenaica. ⁸³⁸³ {Bogus footnote} Because they were (πελτασταὶ) shieldsmen, he says that they “laid bare the shield;” for when they enter the field of battle, they draw the shields out of their sheaths.