Verse 16
This is the lamentation with which they shall lament her ,.... The Egyptians themselves, or rather they that are after mentioned. The Targum is,
"the prophet said, a lamentation is this prophecy, and it shall be for a lamentation;'
he was bid at the beginning of it to take up a lamentation, and now at the end of it he pronounces it to be one, and that it should be sung as such:
the daughters of the nations shall lament for her ; either literally understood, it being the business and custom of women to say or sing the funeral dirge, or the lamentation at the interment of the deceased; or figuratively, the inhabitants of other nations. So Ben Melech and the Targum,
"the villages of the people shall lament her';
that is, the inhabitants of them, who were in alliance with Egypt, and under its protection:
they shall lament for her, even for Egypt, and for all her multitude ; for the desolation of the land, and for the vast numbers of people that should be slain with the sword, or carried captive:
saith the Lord God ; which is added for the confirmation of it; for what he has spoken shall be done.
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