Verse 9
(9) An assembly of great nations from the north country.—Like all the great monarchies of the East, the Medo-Persian kingdom, which was to be the destroyer of Babylon, was made up of a congeries of many different races. Herodotus (vii. 61-69), in his account of the army of Xerxes, names twenty-two, from the Medes and Persians at the head of the list to the Arabians and Ethiopians at its close.
From thence she shall be taken.—The Hebrew adverb may be taken either of time or place. The latter, as referring to the region from which the assailants come, gives the better sense.
As of a mighty expert man.—The marginal rendering, “destroyer,” follows the Vulgate and the Targum, and represents a various reading. There is no sufficient reason for rejecting the Authorised Version, which has the support of the LXX. and the Syriac versions.
None shall return in vain.—Grammatically the words may refer either to the warrior or the arrow. The use of the same phrase in 2 Samuel 1:22; Isaiah 55:11 is perhaps in favour of the latter.
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