The prophet’s office of threatening woe is now over. Here, out of love, he himself crieth woe unto himself. He hath “continual sorrow in heart” Romans 9:2 for his people. He bewails what he cannot amend, and, by bewailing, shews them how much more they should bewail it, over whose sins he sorrows; how certain the destruction is, since there is none to stand in the gap and turn away the wrath of God, no “ten righteous,” for whose sake the city may be spared. Rup.: “These words flow out of the fount of pity, because the good zeal, wherewith the Holy seem to speak severely, is never without pity. They are wroth with the sins, they sympathize with the sinner.” So Isaiah mourned for the judgment, which he prophesied against the world, “Woe is me!” Isaiah 24:16 he sorrowed even for Moab Isaiah 15:5; Isaiah 16:11; and Joel, “Alas for the day!” Joel 1:15. and Jeremiah in that exclamation of impassioned sorrow; “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole world!” Jeremiah 15:10.