Behold, waters rise out of the north Waters sometimes signify multitudes of people and nations, Revelation 17:15; sometimes great and threatening calamities, Psalms 69:1, these waters mean both. By the north, in this prophecy, the country of the Chaldeans is intended, from whence it is here foretold an army should come and overflow the land like a deluge, spreading devastation and destruction everywhere. At the noise of the stamping, &c. The word שׁעשׂת, here rendered stamping, occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Scriptures. The LXX. render it, ορμης, impetus, force, rushing along: the Syriac and Chaldee, by words that respectively denote a progressive motion. “But Grotius,” says Blaney, “seems to have expressed it most happily, who has rendered מקול שׁעשׂת, a quadrupedante sono: having in view, no doubt, that line of Virgil, Æn. 8: 596.
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.
We may therefore render it, At the galloping sound, or, at the sound of the galloping,” of the hoofs of his strong horses Hebrew, אביריז, of his mighty ones; namely, horses. At the rushing of his chariots, the rumbling of his wheels Blaney unites these two particulars in one, and reads, “At the rattling of the multitude of his wheels as he drove along.” The fathers shall not look back to their children To provide for their safety, or so much as to see what becomes of them; for feebleness of hands Their bodily vigour being dissolved, or relaxed, through the impression made by fear on their minds, which shall be such as to incapacitate them from exerting their strength to any efficacious purpose.