For the mountains will I take up a weeping “These words,” says Houbigant, “as they now lie, must belong either to Jeremiah or the daughter of Zion; and yet it follows in the next verse, And I will make, which are the words of God: therefore this verse should be rendered, by a slight alteration of the text, ‘Take ye up a weeping and wailing on the mountains, a lamentation in the dwellings of the wilderness; for they are desolate, because there is no traveller; nor is the voice of cattle heard in them; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled.'“ The prophet laments that general desolation which he sees coming upon the whole land, and which would involve all the parts of it, both high and low, in one common destruction. I will make Jerusalem heaps Of rubbish, and lay it in such ruins that it shall be fit for nothing but to be a den of dragons
Or serpents, as the word תנים frequently signifies, or such creatures as are usually found in ruins or desolate places.