Then were the horse-hoofs broken This verse finely expresses, and gives us the strongest image of, the confusion and rapidity of the flight of Sisera's captains and great men, as well as of the multitude, from God and Israel; which was such that the very hoofs of their horses were broken by their swift and violent running over the stony ground. Prancings Or, because of their fierce or swift courses. The word דהר, dahar, here rendered prancings, is used also Nahum 3:2, where, from the word it is joined with, says Dr. Dodd, it must mean the clattering of the horse on full speed. The marginal reading, tramplings, or plungings, he thinks preferable to the text, and observes, that the meaning of it cannot perhaps be better expressed than by the well-known line of Virgil:
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.
“‘They shake with horny hoofs the solid ground.”
Dr. Waterland proposes that אביריו, abiraiv, here rendered their mighty ones, should be translated their mighty horses, an interpretation which the word will easily bear, and which increases the force and beauty of the passage, as they were doubtless “not common horses, but their best and strongest, whose hoofs were broken on this occasion.” The reader will observe that it was not the custom to shoe their horses in these ancient times, and indeed, according to Tavernier, Montfaucon, and others, they have at present excellent horses in Arabia and Tartary which are never shod. See Dodd.