Of small power. — Literally, short-handed. (Comp. Isaiah 1:2; Isaiah 59:1.) Keil compares the well-known title of Artaxerxes I., Longimanus, the “long-handed,” as if that epithet meant far-reaching in power. Thenius says that a frightened man draws in his arms (?)
As the grass ... — The as may better be omitted. They were field growth and green herbage; grass of the roofs and blasting before stalk. The sense seems imperfect, unless we supply the idea of withering away, as in Psalms 37:2; Psalms 90:5-6; Psalms 129:6; Isaiah 40 (5, 7. Instead of the word blasting the parallel text (Isaiah 37:27) has field — a difference of one letter. Thenius adopts this, and corrects stalk into east wind, no great change in the Hebrew. We thus get the appropriate expression: and a field before the east wind.